


Mayhaps you have seen my dragon?

by StarOverHeaven



Series: The Thu'um of Serpents [1]
Category: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Other, Tom Riddle's Horcruxes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2018-01-27
Packaged: 2019-02-18 18:58:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13106487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarOverHeaven/pseuds/StarOverHeaven
Summary: In which Hadrian Potter, born to Lily and James Potter, is born with the ability to speak more than Parseltongue.* Please note this is a WIP drabble. That means this work might never be finished, or have long uneven pauses between updates.





	1. To choose a magical stick...

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter words: 7378  
> Posted: 12/22/17 @ 6pm  
> Chapter Rating: Teen  
> Warnings: N/A

Ancient stories lost to the modern tongue do not die. Oh, they can be forgotten, burned from records and hidden away under a thousand hundred years of dirt, but they do not die. The fact that none hear them does not make them any less real, or any less effective. Especially not when it comes to Prophecy. You see, far before there was any difference between 'muggle' and 'wizard,' there was a great world. Perhaps during the ages of Pangea breaking away. 

In these times, there was little land. Cyrodiil, Skyrim, among smaller lands, barely a day or three's ride from border to border. These lands were different. Factions yes, magic engraved into life. Potions were commonplace, herbal remedies of far ancient times. But as the rift between Man, Beast and Mer grew, times grew harder. Species consolidated, and a great ravine between those who could wield magic and those who could not began to form. 

The Beast-people's died out, for the most part. Argonians survived barely, until the sinking of the great city Atlantis, as the plates of the earth itself moved and a giant crevasse swallowed the city. Nobody had heard from the Argonians again, after that. The Mer, now known as the Greater Elves, disappeared, leaving only the descendants of their once-slaves, taken in as House Elves by the Magik Men. 

As war grew between Unmagikal and Magikal men, those with the strongest Magic in the Illusion School began to band together to create great domes of warped space. They made vaults and filled them with ancient knowledge. A great Wizard named Merlin, the youngest seven and one of the only Dragonborn of that era, created a great castle near a huge lake with water so dark it looked black, and placed every book he ever raided in a vault deep in the hill the castle stood on, carved with dragons, for Merlin held the power of the Thu'um. It is rumored in the ancient text that Merlin himself was the descendant of the Dragonborn which slayed the Great Dragon Alduin. 

After Merlin the first died, the castle and its powerful wardstones and illusionary warped-space Anti-muggle barriers stood firm. It was passed down century to century, and the souls of the Dragons that Merlin and his ancestors had taken guarded it, great wraiths of power that prowled in the long-forgotten places of the castle, invisible to nearly all of mankind. 

Merlin the second, born in the times of Arthur Pendragon, was the second Merlin in the Merlin Line. Descendant of the first dragonborn, known only in those times as the Dragonlord, he spoke to the Last Great Dragon, Kilgharrah, descendant of the dragon Paarthurnax who lived amongst the Greybeards, the great holders of the Thu'um. It was said that the Great Grey Dragon lived upon the Throat Of The World, which had shifted with the parting of the Great Pangea and was now known the world over as part of the Himalayan Mountains. 

Merlin the 2nd stepped alongside Arthur Pendragon always, birthed the Great White Dragon Aithusa from one of the last Dragon Eggs, and ultimately failed in his quest to assist Arthur in uniting all of Albion. Blessed by Magik herself, Merlin then made the great trek to the Throat Of The World. Near centuries later, he descended upon the Dragonborn Castle, which had since been claimed by four people in the name of education. 

Salazar Slytherin, Godric Gryffindor, Rowena Ravenclaw and Helga Hufflepuff greeted him cheerily. He was sorted upon expressing his wish to learn more, and went to Salazar Slytherin's House. The Parselmouth held a rare gift descended of those who could speak to dragons, though it was mutated. Upon learning that they were related, Merlin named Salazar his heir, and thus died. 

Salazar, who owned the castle and all the land it was on, said nothing of how he owned it. Instead, he endeavored to find the Vault below the castle. Growing distant from his friends, he found the Sky-tunnel which led to the vault in the Dark Forest and set a protection upon it. Salazar ended up hatching a Basilisk that he found in the Vault on accident, as the egg had been in a case and had waited for its Wizard for centuries before he met it. Naming the descendant of dragons Gronvith, which meant 'bond/clan' and 'snake' in the Old Thu'um, he spent much of his time in the vault. So much so that he called it his Chamber. 

His friends, furious upon believing he had crafted a chamber with a dangerous beast in it, exiled him. Salazar did not argue, and instead spent decades searching for a Great Dragon Egg to preserve the Ancient Dragons. Failing in his quest, Salazar met a lovely man who was gifted in alchemy, and they had three children together. 

These three brothers were named for their father, and his brothers. These three boys held the last name of their father, Peverell, and in their later days they encountered Death itself, who was cheated by their discoveries in how to cheat Death. In return for forgetting their method to escape it, Death would grant each of them a wish, regardless of how powerful. 

Antioch, the first born, was a brash young man with a lust for power. He asked Death for a unbeatable wand, the most powerful wand to ever be made, regardless of mankind's limitations. His duels and boasting of holding the most powerful wand, which were naturally conductors of magic, of all of mankind led to his throat being slit, and the legendary wand stolen from his stiff fingertips. 

Cadmus, the second born, was a vain but romantic man. Deeply saddened by his fiance's death, Cadmus asked Death to grant him an item that would let him call his fiance from the Land of the Dead, the Soul Cairn, just as she was before. Death granted him this wish, but felt cheated, for the entire point of the wishes was so that the brothers could not cheat Death. In revenge, he made it so that for every moment that Cadmus held his love in the world of the living, she would deteriorate. Driven to maddened sadness after his fiance, crippled by this, disappeared forever, Cadmus hung himself. The stone passed on to his son, who was born to his argonian-descended fiance before she died. The son, saddened by his father's passing but knowledgeable of the stone, put it in a ring. This ring is now the Lord Ring of his descendants, House Gaunt, but the ring still induces a fevered madness if not handled carefully. 

Ignotus, the third son, was a wise yet young man. The ravenclaw to Cadmus and Antioch's Gryffindor ways, Ignotus asked Death for a cloak that could hide him from the sight of anything, living, dead, or higher. Death, though reluctantly, slit a long cloth from its own cloak, and handed it to him. What it was not aware of was that its own cloak, severed and given to another, had changed its loyalty. He could not find Ignotus, but on the day Ignotus was due to die, he fell upon the man. 

Ignotus passed the Invisibility Cloak to his son, born to him of Elena Potter, a bright woman with a vibrant personality and firm outlook. Ignotus passed on the genes of messy hair to match to Elena's chocolate eyes, but he also passed something that ran amongst all those related to both Salazar and Merlin himself; Parseltongue, and Drakentongue. 

And so it went. The Gaunt line continued, and so did the Potters, until finally, they reached the ones prophecy long forgotten spoke of, far before, when prophecy held weight far greater than the measly lie that Albus Dumbledore fed to the Death Eater spy in that inn. 

When Tom Marvolo Riddle was born, the world knew. Magic herself may be long asleep, hibernating in the weakening days and ages of today, but her Great Dragons, long forgotten, roused. Ancient bones that should have been crumbled to dust that lay beneath mountains and in caves of the great plains in which Magic herself once resided, hidden from the common men finally roused from their ancient slumber. 

Death itself turned its great eye to the world, peering closely upon Tom Marvolo Riddle, the destined soulmate of its future Master. 

For where Tom Marvolo Riddle was power, strength in all things, wisdom and age and the speaker of serpents, a prophecy that spoke of him began to rumble. 

Fate, long dead, roused to speak It once more. 

"Born as the seventh month dies, 

Matched to the death of the 26th year, 

Two shall perish, both shall survive 

And upon that very day they will rise 

Born of blood and sinew 

The boy of cold ash and dust 

And the man born of iron blood and rust 

Two souls matched, 

The birth and the end of the final year." 

"Master of Death, 

Pale Rider, born but never alive, 

A chance to live 

But only to survive 

Alone and cold 

A fire without a flame 

Only risen by the tinder 

Of the serpent-speaking thane." 

And then Fate slept, and Death stood guard over the Soul Cairn, great eye wide. 

And Hadrian Harrigan Potter was born. 

~-~ 

Hadrian was born early on September 1979, on the 30th. He was taken from his mother's womb to save his life months early due to an issue with magical compatibility, more specifically because Lily Potter's magic was seeing him not as her child but as a magical parasite due to a improperly grown umbilical cord and the fact that Hadrian was subsisting entirely on her magic due to the malformation. So Lily's magic began to attack Hadrian, who, already ill from the malnutrition of body, could not stand it. Lily, who had grown ill suddenly, had gone to St Mungo's with her new husband James out of concern. Both were horrified to find what the problem was, and Hadrian was taken out via the magical equivalent of a C-section. His middle name was given in honor of the mediwizard who saved him. 

Hadrian then spent many months in a stabilizing pod, fed nutritional mush and donated samples of magic from his godfathers and parents. He was freed of his pod after six months and given to his parents, who were given a special potion regime to feed him. Other than that, Hadrian was a perfectly normal, if unusually small, child. He liked flying well enough, but _loved_ books, especially fairytales, and had a fondness for magical creatures, specifically dragons. His godfather in honor, Remus Lupin, regaled Hadrian several times a week with stories of dragons, vampires and other creatures, but Harry also grew up knowing vividly of the awful laws all of them were subjected to, too. 

Harry was graced with a baby brother around the age of one on July 31st, 1980, named Charlie Sirius Potter. Charlie was the near opposite of Harry, and liked flying far more than any book. Where Harry was small, with dark hair and vividly green eyes, with pale skin on a lean body and a dorky grin, Charlie was red-haired, with brown eyes, pudgy cheeks and a cacophony of freckles across his pink cheeks. Charlie _loved_ Sirius and the stories he told of his pranks, was missing a tooth from where he fell off his toy broom, and raced across the house constantly. 

Harry was much quieter than Charlie, but they were friendly with one another. Harry spent much of his time reading, which Charlie found boring, though. 

However, it was on the Halloween of 1981 when it happened. Young Harry, nearly two, was playing in the nursery while his baby brother slept in his crib, tuckered out from playing all day with their nanny, a squib they were very fond of. 

Voldemort did not smash his way inside, as people would lead you to believe. Instead, he opened the door near-silently, stepping inside. The squib was asleep in the living room with a well-placed _Stupefy,_ and he was free to get what he came for. 

Tom was not quite _gone,_ at this point. His mind was crippled by both horcrux and madness, but he was not gone, nor so damaged he could not be saved. So in this place, this world, when one of his most loyal begged of him to spare Lily Potter, he did not go to the Potter home when they were there. Instead, he threatened Peter Pettigrew into giving him the Fidelius secret, and then directed the useless rat to get the Potters out of their home for a halloween party. 

However, his brief moments of thoughtful sanity had grown rare, and so he was unaware that Severus, wary of this and knowing the likelihood that Voldemort had listened was low, went to Dumbledore anyway, even as Voldemort stopped in the doorway to the nursery. 

Acidic green and bloodied stone red met as the toddler looked at the man, and the man looked back. 

Voldemort, driven by a madness in the few moments to which Tom was too startled by the way his chest lurched upon eyes of green and red meeting, threw forth a spell just as green as the boys eyes. Poetic that the boy would die to a spell the same color as his eyes, Voldemort thought. 

But the boy did not die, for Death refused to touch the boy, knowing that this was its one chance to truly choose the one who would command it. Instead, the boys magic absorbed the spell and, in doing so, accepted the magic absorbed alongside it. The spell floundered, for the spell had to be backed by killing intent, and therefore could not do as it was designed for Death itself refused to allow it to do what it was meant to do. 

The spell rebounded, to the horror of Voldemort. A mere second later, and Voldemort could think no more. 

The Potter's came back to their home, hours later, to the sniffles of the two brothers and the squib guarding them in her arms. The house, they saw, was collapsed into itself on the second floor. It was in great disarray, covered in soot. The boys were mostly fine, exempting only one thing; Charlie had an odd scar on his cheek. 

And so the boy was hailed the Boy Who Lived. 

Nobody noticed the odd imprint upon Harry's inner right wrist. If one looked close, you could almost say it was a dragon. 

{°\/°} 

Harry liked to think himself very patient. And he was! He had to be, really, because in the Potter family, nothing was slow. This included, of course, his brothers irritating voice. Constantly, his brother nattered on and on, from bragging to Quidditch. If he wasn't talking, he was moving. In fact, Harry could say that his brother never really stopped moving. Shaking his leg, tapping fingers, all the way to chewing quills and running through the house. 

He would be more irritated if he wasn't so used to it, he supposed. 

As time went on, he didn't really need to be 'used to it' as often. Once Charlie and James bonded over Quidditch, Harry didn't really need to be around. Charlie could entertain himself well enough, the boy figured. So he turned his veridian eyes from family to knowledge. 

The Potters had a big library. Old, not quite big enough to fight in the big league libraries like those of the Malfoys or such, mostly due to the Potter's mostly Gryffindor legacy. In olden times, Gryffindors tended to be more on the side of war and glory than knowledge, and while capable of being great tacticians, had lackluster skills when it came to simple _knowing._

That was for the house of Ravenclaw and Slytherin. You see, where Gryffindors were glory, and Hufflepuffs infrastructure, Slytherins were the planners. The what-goes-there and who-goes-where, the people to build cities and architecture. Ambitious, nowadays they were more often risk-taking politicians than the builders of ancient wizarding architecture, people who handled money instead of risk. 

Ravenclaws, however, changed little. They were still scholars, still wielders of knowledge. While you could plan on Slytherins planning their every step, Ravenclaws were the genius scholar types of the world. A rivalry between Ravenclaws and Slytherins would be even worse than that of the calm-headed serpents and hot-headed lions, because both houses hosted geniuses of ages and eras. The only difference? Where Ravenclaws planned to learn for knowledge's sake, Slytherins learned to _use it._

The truth was that Ravenclaw and Slytherin were perhaps the most overlapping of the four houses. A twin of a Ravenclaw who was a Slytherin can blend in just as easily amongst the only winged residents of Hogwarts as the snakes. It is a simple fact. But there is the stark difference, between how they are perceived: That Ravenclaws care only for a book, and that Slytherins care only for the death of those below them. 

While Slytherins and Gryffindors hold the most attention, it is not Hufflepuffs but Ravenclaws most often overlooked. At the very least, Hufflepuff was a punchline. Therefore, none could forget it. But Ravenclaws, despite what many would believe, were the most overlooked amongst their peers. 

Despite their intellect, many Ravenclaws were… dulled. Not dull, no, but perhaps simply less _aware._ The mix of those whom were not soft, or sharp, or rough. Just… there. The leftover scraps of the heap, where all sorts of personalities mixed. But it wore on them, to be forgotten so easily, to be the distant ones amongst their peers. For all their smarts, they were awarded the least, looked over instead to Gryffindors or Slytherins by the teachers, who could not unfocus their gaze from them lest they do something 'evil' or pull a 'prank' upon one another. 

Hufflepuffs were coddled irritatingly, but at least they received attention. And Harry was well on his way, you see, to being a Ravenclaw. His growing distance with his family pulled on him, as time went on. Being overlooked for his rambunctious younger brother did not make him bitter, as one would assume. Instead, as time grew, he became thankful for it. 

He found solace in a good book, be it maths or herbology, or a great fictional work a million words long. As time went on you could almost expect him to be a cushion , he was so sunken into the old soft chair in the library. The warmth of a fire and his cocoa or tea beside him, forever warm from a well placed charm. 

As time grew, so did he. He never outgrew his lean, half-starved look. Too engrossed in a good book to eat, or sleep, or breath. His health, already deteriorated from his weakened body from his unusual birth, grew worse as time went on. He barely noticed. 

Harry was used to being small. He filled his head with books until he could barely walk, his brain was so fuzzed, forever playing like a cinema. Harry felt much like a puppet would, sometimes, forcing himself to eat so he could learn more. His mind was honed from years of reading of all sorts of magic and knowledge, quite literally a library, all the books framed in the exact shelves he found them on, in their exact place. 

He read a book, and as he did he recorded it, from the words on each page to the texture of the cover and the fine filigree of the titles and authors. He also recorded which books he had read and which he had not, that way, and few remained that he had not read. If he focused, sometimes he could see all the protections laced into his mind. 

He wasn't aware of it, but he also recorded memories. His mental 'library' of sorts held all his knowledge, and it was more than that. It was a fine tuned occlumency, done by his magic and mind alike. His memories were hidden well, so well not even he knew where they hid. Dust mites in the pages, spiders and their webs in the darker shelves where the naughty, bloodied, human-leather books resided. The very stone under his steps, the cathedral ceiling and vaulted stone to which every shelf towered to reach, a two story stone building filled with so much knowledge that the dusty, blue-stained glass windows lit upon the very magic they exuded. 

As he grew, his memory palace grew with him. The darker books, no longer hidden due to his age, were devoured with feverous eagerness. Dark stairwells in odd places led to the basement, then, where all the darkest of his knowledge hid. Thin puddles of too-thick, dark water resided in the seams of the stone, and where it dipped. The shelves here were dark, too, wood covered with scars of fire and thin layers of soot and bone dust. The older books resided on shelves that were more carved alcoves, dipping into the old stone of the basement. Water dripped from the ceiling, despite all knowledge that no water resided above this floor. 

Perhaps it wasn't so odd, then, that Harry was surprised when his eleventh birthday came about. 

It was after all one of the few days he deigned to chart off every year, and one of even fewer where he bothered to come out of the library to eat with his family. His family who, while never quite forgetting him, disregarded him often enough that it was a surprise every time. 

So when he came downstairs to the grand living room, letter in hand and his Vermiculated fishing owl, Ptolemy, on his shoulder. Acidic-Veridian eyes blinked languidly at his godfather, Remus. 

"I got a letter." Harry informed Remus quietly. 

And he did. Two in fact. One, the hogwarts letter, was stamped with red wax with the hogwarts crest on dull yellow paper. A soft, minty envelope stamped with a bright blue wax from Beauxbatons came alongside it, from a lovely Snowy owl, just after the exhausted Tawny from Hogwarts left. Ptolemy, seething at the other owls proximity, had yet to leave his shoulder. 

For Harry, this was momentous occasion, mostly because nobody bothered to send him letters, though he was vaguely friendly with a few of the Weasley brothers from when Ron came over, mostly Percy. To receive not one, but two letters from two international schools was surprising, but Harry knew that the likelihood of him even being able to look _twice_ at the Beauxbatons letter was next to nothing, if his hogwarts-zealous father saw it. 

So he had simply… forgotten the high quality, blue-green envelope and its letter in his desk in his room. Instead, he showed Remus the Hogwarts letter, with a dorky smile that told everyone who saw it that he was not a boy who smiled often. 

Remus obviously did not care about the awkward attempt at smiling, as Harry was immediately struggling not to get smothered in the tight, pressing hug the werewolf pulled him into. 

_Perhaps,_ The lonely boy who oft told himself he was not lonely thought, _this wouldn't be so bad._

~-~ 

_Or maybe,_ The boy thought to himself snippily, the next day, _this would be terrible._

The cause for his bad temper was that his family was a very social family. While he had been able to avoid most public things such as going to Diagon Alley, he was now in full view of three dozen other families with kids going to hogwarts, he had no such choice of whether he wished to be seen or not. It itched at him, an inherently uncomfortable feeling, like something crawling under his skin. The hyper-alert gaze of the people watching him like he was a new treat disturbed him. 

But he had no choice of whether he wanted to be there. So little of a choice, in fact, that his father had genuinely hunted him down and dragged him out of bed, dressed him roughly in his excitement, and ferried him downstairs to Floo. And so he did- straight into the loudness of the Alley. People crying about their wares, families shuffling, and by the gods it was _such a thin alleyway, and there were so many people!_

Not to mention they brought his little brother along. Gods, he was getting a headache fast, keeping track of all this. The alley was so loud, and his brother (who was only ten) had yet to grow weary of it all, practically screaming in delight at things. And of course, where his brother went, paparazzi showed up, too. 

It took depressingly little time after that for his parents to nearly totally forget that it was _his_ 'big day' and not his little brothers. Harry reprimanded himself- he knew it would happen eventually, after all, like it had _literally every other time-_ but he simply took his coin purse attached to his trust vault and continued on. Nobody went after him, his parents too busy posing with bright smiles and their hands on his brother's shoulders for pictures. 

His first stop was to get a wand. The wrinkly but seemingly jolly (and sort of creepy) old man helped him find his wand. Every single one he tried seemed to reject him, until a Holly wand with a phoenix core. It accepted him, but holding it seemed to _burn_ somehow. He told Ollivander this. 

The old man rubbed at his chin for a moment, taking the wand. "The core has bonded to you, but the wood of the wand has rejected you. And judging from these burn marks where you held it, the wand isn't powerful enough for you, either." 

The man couldn't seem to figure it out, after a while. "I'll tell you what," The wand maker decided, "I will pull this wand apart- it is too damaged to use anyway- and you can buy the feather off of me for five galleons. Perhaps if you go to a wand maker with skill in making personal, custom wands they can bond it to the correct wood for you. None of the cores I gave you aside from this feather were compatible anyway." 

And this was true, for every dragon heartstring wand he tried, the core burnt up in the wood. The unicorn hair faired better, but not by much. And no light woods seemed to be really capable of bonding with him. 

It occurred to him suddenly, "But where would I find someone to make it?" 

The old man considered this. "I know a place in Knockturn, but you may wish to look in your family vault before you go looking for the place. Old wands are more powerful, from when Magic was most prevalent among us. And either way, the shop is in a dangerous area of the alley. You would be safer to try an old wand, than to go there." 

So Harry went to Gringotts, the softly glowing feather pressed in his hand. The plumes were carefully wrapped around the shaft, making it look like a coiled spring of fire. It was warm, too warm, against his skin as he walked up the slightly crooked steps to the great white bank. He stepped inside, shoulders tight as the feeling of _earth hum old_ swept down his spine. 

The goblins had never made him nervous, but they had a magic twofold as old as man, for they had no genuine reason to let go the ancient magics. Either way, the goblins were far more connected to the earth than any other, excepting the long-dead Dwemer for which the Goblins were descended from. It is said in ancient books about Goblins that they were the child of orc and Dwemer, and that they were the strongest of any craft excepting by that of the Dwemer for whom they were descended. They worshipped one god, who was the nameless god of Earth, Forge and Craft. 

Harry knew their greetings well, having read scrolls and books from the library about them. He looked carefully, and went to a goblin he recognised from his youth as the Potter account manager, bowing carefully. "Greetings to you, Gravelaxe. I hope you are well, that your coffers bleed gold, and your enemies are crushed." He greeted, carefully. 

Gravelaxe blinked at him with beady black eyes, crossing his fingers. "Greetings, Heir Potter. May your tongue be silver, and your eyes be emeralds." The old goblin replied, as is custom to responding to other races. The goblin-to-goblin greeting was more along the lines of 'may your clan be strong, and your hand bold' depending on which clan it was, or if it was a greeting between two of differing clans. 

"What can I do for you today, little heir?" The goblin asked. 

"I need to access the wands of my forefathers, ancestors, and their ancestors." 

Gravelaxe raised a brow, but didn't question it. Much. "Too powerful for those piddly sticks they call conductors, little heir?" 

Harry considered him. "Perhaps just a little." 

Gravelaxe smiled. It was threatening, all sharp uneven fangs and tough molars, with far too many teeth. "Come with me then." The goblin said, depositing his short stature upon the ground and moving to one of the back entryways to the carts. Harry trotted after the unusually fast walk of the goblin, nary taller than his tiny stature as it was. 

The cart ride was brilliantly fast. Harry loved it, the sensation of flying as the cart whistled around the tracks, so fast that if it were a train it would fly right off the track. The dips, hills and sharp, leaning turns reminded him of memories he did not have, like it was scratching an itch he had never felt. He loved it, the soaring speed and the sharp turn, right until the end, where the cart slowed steadily to a stop above a deep trench. 

This part of the bank was filled with huge caverns filled with Darkwater, a thick black substance like water but not quite that hummed with olde magic, from forgotten times. It was said to enrich earth, but it could not survive in the sun. The Darke magic in it was supposedly from the corpse of Alduin himself, the Great Black Dragon, the World Eater. It is said that when Alduin was slaid in Sovngarde, his blood ran so thick it made great rivers that bellowed up from the Heart Of The World and filled all of the Empty in it. Great places with rich Ley Lines were said to be upon pockets of Darkwater, which made Magic's grip on the world stronger. Diagon Alley was, in fact, built over a great cavern filled with it, which the Goblins built into. 

In the Darkwater, he saw shapes. Odd and sharp, they slid under the water, distorting it, but they never quite came out, merely shaping it. He turned his eyes away to instead look at the vault they had brought him to. 

The Goblin walked him to the cavern that led to the vault he had been brought to. Ancient, it held a crest not of the Potters, but instead of another family. Decorated in dragons, it held the picture of a bat and a bird (or was that three birds?) and wings of carefully stained glass. The stone dragons carved alongside it from the stone itself watched him with eyes of gemstones. 

"This is not the Potter vault." Harry knew this because the Potter crest was filled with reds and golds, with two lions either side, and a lion roaring with a ring on its tongue for the shield. 

"It is not." Gravelaxe said, "Because this is the vault of the Peverell family, whom the Potters are descended from, and who your grandfather forbade your father and his wife from ever accessing for fear that was well placed. The Peverell family was Dark, and dipped into Black and Old magic. They were a family of necromancers, and this door," The goblin gestured to the shield, which had a thick seam in it, "opens to all three vaults.The Potters are the only descendants, aside from the Gaunt family. You have right to open the vaults, but your siblings and family do not." 

The goblin's eyes held a knowing gleam. Harry wondered why, so he asked. 

"You have the blood of the Dragonlord, or better known, the dragonborn. It is a title that skips lines by the eldest, unless the eldest does not live, to which it passes to the second. Your brother does not have the blood of Dragons in him, but you do, and all your other traits qualify you for the Peverell Lordship. We always tracked your bloodline heavily, testing their magics for every generation. You are the first one in nearly a dozen of them to have it. Therefore, you are the first in dozens to qualify for the Peverell lordship, for the requirements were that the wizard or witch in question held a Darke core, and the blood of dragons descended of their line. However, due to the breeding of your family, the goblin nation has doubted it would ever come back." 

"Why did you track my bloodline for so long, in hopes that a dragonborn would come back?" Harry asked. 

"Because of the Ancient Prophecy given by Fate herself. It told that a dragonborn favored by death and equal to a man for whom the dragonborn shares a soul would be born, and they would bring back the oldest of magic from the times before, allowing Magic to regain her hold upon the world so that those of magic and those without may live with peace. Ever since the muggles began to populate the world so heavily, Magic has been slowly dying as the rites that kept her alive fell out of favor by the Ministries of magic for magical countries in favor for promoting muggleborn adaptation. Since then, she has started losing her hold on the world, and her favor for those with magic has lessened for those who do not worship her, so much so that their descendants are born without magic in their veins. The only reason magical people still exist is their inbreeding to strengthen their magic. Soon enough, magic will die." 

Harry considered this as they entered the vault. He had to place his hand on the door, which took some of his blood. Glowing symbols appeared on the door, and he read them, his vision fading into a shuddering sight of a huge gust of wind. Knowledge split his head, and his vocals swelled without his wish, and a burst of noise exploded from him. 

**_"FUS"_**

The door shuddered under the strength, and then opened slowly as the words faded. 

He was greeted by a chamber. The walls were lined with racks filled with interesting bowls and cauldrons, and odd plants growing from special pots enchanted to the bottoms, growing the plants of hundreds of species that were used in Olde alchemy, the last of their kind. An odd table with weirdly shaped glassware stood in the center of the room, surrounded by thick dirt and rampaging growths of flowers and mushrooms on rotting wooden logs placed there. The three rooms split off from separate doorways to the sides and behind the odd alchemy table. One was so filled with gold that it was spilling out of the door, forbidding entry, and one opposite it was filled with weaponry, gems of odd purple that glowed, and a weird table with a skull, along with dozens of odd armors of gold, green glass, and an evil-looking black chitinous armor that glows faintly with runes and odd shimmers telling of enchantment. 

The centered one, however, was most interesting. It held a thin, tall wall filled with hundreds of boxes, thin and of all sorts of colors. A tiny sapling with gold leaves and pink flowers glowed faintly from a small pot in the center of the room. To either side, however, were dozens of bones too big to be anything but a dragons, and dozens of trinkets, odd looking weaponry, and dozens of other things. A fully intact dragon skeleton with thick, blackened bones hung from the ceiling, held up by thin chains. Its back faced the ground, and its long neck extended down to look straight at him. He froze, staring up at it, when it rattled as it moved. It was judging him somehow, he knew. 

Deeming him acceptable, its glowing eyes faded, along with the dozens of odd glowing orbs in its hollow chest. 

Breathing a sigh of relief, he looked at the room closer, now knowing why the goblin had not entered with him. The odd weaponry, he saw, was placed strategically. A sun-shaped object with a round purple glowing gem not unlike those in the enchanting and armory room was held carefully on the wall, and dragons feet and claws were placed, made of dozens of kinds of gemstones and stone with interesting circular stamps of animals on the bottom. Some of the claws looked like they were painted, the gemstones they had been carved from were so pure. It made them look like they had a manicure, and Harry tried not to snort. 

Along with the claws placed in stands all over the shelves, a thin dark staff with screaming faces on top sat on the top shelf. Next to it were a few other staffs, some glowing, some not. A sword hung above them on an old stand with ancient red cloth, a faintly glowing golden sun sputtering in the handle. 

There were also a lot of really old books with symbols on them in quite a few old shelves. They were organized by their symbol and color, he saw, and when he opened one he saw that they were about spells, each about a different one. The spellbooks also went by a 'school' system, where each school was specifically based around certain things. Such as Restoration, which was about healing and resurrection. A few spells based around the dead and repelling the dead were also the Restoration school, he saw. 

Even from just looking at them, he knew that this magic was unlike any other. The pictures of the book he had picked up, Healing Hands, showed a carefully detailed charcoal picture of hands and a glowing golden orb above them, stained with precision into the parchment paper. Was this what Old Magic was? So old and powerful, not even a wand needed to be used? 

He hesitated, remembering the reason he had gone to Gringotts. A wand. 

He held out the phoenix feather again, watching it hum in his hands, inching along his palm. Harry looked up, to see where it was trying to go, and was met with the boxes of wands. It looked like more than six dozen were there, every single box with a wand from the hands of his elders, no doubt placed in those related to the Peverells and taken. Or were these from the before times? 

There was a small stone slab with a round circle imprinted in it. Harry considered it for a moment, then carefully placed the phoenix feather in it. It glowed, and he placed his hand to the stone. A soft rumble caused him to look up. A dozen of the boxes had inched out of their places and slowly hovered and settled on the ledge in front of him. 

Some of the boxes were blackened with soot and ash, and one box was damaged with what seemed to be acid marks. Others were clean, if dusty, and had no such damage. 

He looked at them 

The first box was a deep, bloodied red stained with a rust-colored liquid. A strip of parchment on it read this; "Cap of Namira's Rot, Bone." 

The second was a deep yellow like old ivory, and read this; "Werewolf  & Vampire fang core, Yew. Was favored by Hewn-kiln, no last name. A werewolf who served as part of the Dawnguard, Kewn-kiln used this wand sparingly after he had it made, for, as he put it, 'it had a tendency to suck the life from his enemies, regardless of who, or what, they were.'" 

The third was a soft, stained blue with a rich parchment that read this; "Hagraven Feather, Birch. Originally favored by Penet Gaunt, seconded by her son Petre. Penet mostly used bow and arrow as her weapon, and had this wand made for her son from a Hagraven she killed. Petre used it until his death at the hands of a dragon which fell upon the farm that he and his family lived on outside of what used to be Markarth. It was scavenged later by his youngest daughter, who never used it." 

The fourth was a wooden box carved with animals he did not recognize. It read this; "Gleamblossom & Bear Claw, Elder Beech Tree. Made and used by the alchemist and mage Go-Shei Dawnshield, who was an Argonian ancestor of the Gaunt family. It passed down until it was later used by his three-greats granddaughter Metil Gaunt, who was one of few who managed to mix Potioneering and Alchemy to create a cure to a disease, killing it off entirely." 

The fifth was a leather-bound box with burn marks. The parchment was relatively intact, and read this; "Dragon, Daedra & Human Heartstring, Blackthorn handle & Chestnut. Made and used by the warrior mage Meec Potter, who slayed one of the Last Dragons, earning his family the title of Duke of Rain's Shield, a now magically-guarded area in the northeast of England near the Scottish-english border." 

The sixth was a soot-covered once-white box that read this; "Powdered Mammoth Tusk & Human Heart, Handle of Mammoth Bone, Old Oak. Was favored by the son of Meec Potter, whose name was Katter-pier Potter. An accomplished hunter, he used what he thought to be a deer's heart in his wand, and was surprised when the wand held far more power than a deer's heart would provide." 

The seventh was in good condition, made of wood painted with red stain. It read this; "Scathecraw, ancient Maple. Was used by a young mage, Melina Gaunt, who liked enchanting and alchemy. She used the odd, claw-like thing she had found to make a wand, and was surprised at its efficiency in not only tiring her opponents, but afflicting odd effects to them as well." 

The eighth was a black box with no decoration at all. It had no paper to tell what it was. 

The ninth was made of carved stone, with gold lining the rims. It read this; "Skeever Tongue, Carved from large antlers and capped with pearl. Favored by Judas Silver-blood, who went on to marry to Melina Gaunt after she beat him at a duel, to which she floored him." 

The tenth was carved from a huge bone or tusk of something, with strange carvings he could not read. It read this; "Unknown Mixed Blood, Dragon's Horn. Said to be taken from the Throat of the World's ruins, this wand is carved with the ancient language of dragons, and strengthens the voice, applying spells cast with it the power of Thu'um. It was used by a Greybeard's son, who followed the Way of the Voice under the Great Grey Dragon until the Throat of the World fell." 

The eleventh was sooty, carved with feathers and made of wood. It was splattered in soft pock marks that told of acid. It read this; "Frostbite Venom & Spider's Fang, Rotted Pine. Was used exclusively by a strange alchemist who was never named, who was said to tame spiders. It is rumored that the alchemist even tamed an Acromantula. She married a young tailor who was named Jacon Potter, and bore one child before she willingly died when her husband passed away by drinking a mixture of spider's venom." 

The twelfth was burnt badly, so much that a corner was nearly burnt through. It still smelt singed, and like old incense. It used to be brown, and the thin, soft leather that once covered it was burnt away. There was no parchment on it. This box, he noted, was slightly longer than the others, too. 

So, which one should he choose? 


	2. The Mysterious Mystery of Marvolo- wait, Thomas- No, Malvolio- oh, pick a name already!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter words: 5093  
> Posted: 12/26/17 @ 5pm  
> Chapter Rating: Teen  
> Warnings: Some brief gloss overs of mental diseases, etc.

Tom Marvolo Riddle had not been born a normal boy. Oh, for all accounts, he _was-_ his stange middle name and all- but to many he was… odd. His eyes were no normal color, instead a deep brown that faded to gold and red like fire on the edges, so subtle you could barely see it. Streaks of blue and green fired from his iris, dull and shadowed by the earthy brown. His hair was dark, like the darkest of chocolates, and his face aristocratic in shape, an oddity amongst the other children from the working-class orphanage. 

But no, it was not his odd appearance (despite his truly ugly mother, Ms Cole knew) that made the boy so odd. It was not his eyes, however frighteningly intelligent they seemed. No, no no… It was the boy's _everything,_ really _._

The boy was simply strange, once you got past the normal things. His favorite color was dark red, but he also loved deep browns. He liked the cold better, because it was easier to get warm than to cool down. He liked thick blankets, and grinded his teeth when he had nightmares. He was, like all children should be, well mannered. He had simple solutions to things, but thought deeply of them later. 

The boy was properly afraid to die. 

But it took not long for the other children, the older ones, to see what made the boy unusual. The boy feared nothing. His mind, so logical as it was, had simple solutions to fear. He feared bears? Well, it isn't as though there were any bears in london. So he had no _reason_ to fear animals, especially if it wasn't anywhere near! Therefore, he was not scared of predatory animals. Why should he, if they could not reach him? 

And the boy applied this mindset to everything. He feared the ice was thin? Test it with a stick. If it holds, there should be no reason to fear. He feared the dark? Well, what would lurk in the dark? Nothing but bats, he figured, so he did not fear the dark, especially not in a room where he _knew_ the windows were closed. 

But there was one thing the boys logical mind could not create a simple solution to, despite how very much it struggled; Death. You could not circumvent death, not unless you had a miracle happen to you. And he could not simply accept it, either. He was far too young, to understand 'inevitable,' and as he grew he only grew determined, ever more so, that it was possible to circumvent death. 

He could do odd things. Tom knew he could. 

But when he learned what it _was…_

Magic was a fairytale to him, before. But now that he knew what it was, he was determined. Surely those with such abilities would know how to bypass death? 

But no. No, wizards were… foolish. They had no logic, which he understood because they grew up with magic, but they were weak. Their power compared to his was pitiful, for that was all it was. A weak trickle compared to his tsunami. And the more he looked, the more he _saw._ This world of magic and politics was dying. 

The people were weaker for their ineptitude, for they had forgotten the rites that Tom dug up painstakingly. He searched for them, and he found them in the worshipful, who told him the ancient rites that they knew. He looked at his classmates, and could easily spot those who did the rites as they should, or at least tried. They were bolstered, compared to the others, and not one muggleborn had the blessings the rite gave. 

He could not figure out, at first, just how they had managed to stretch the magic. He figured it out eventually, looking closely into the genealogy of his classmates, writing his notes down. 

Those who worshipped the Olde Gods, either Aedra, Daedra, or Magick herself were far more powerful than those who did not. Muggleborns, who were ignorant of custom or did not care enough to truly integrate with whom they shared their ability, despite all hopes of Magic. 

But Tom vowed to not be ignorant. Whatever his blood, his power mattered not without the intellect to use it. And use it he did. He wrote books and kept a devout diary of all he did, long before he finally tested his own genealogy. 

Learning he was the descendant of the Peverells, whom were descendants of Slytherin himself, was a shock. Seeing himself a half blood was not so much of one, however, for he knew that to account for his good looks, seeing his mother's inbred blood, there had to be fresh blood coming into play. 

From there, he learned of the Chamber of Secrets. What secrets? He had tried to find out, searching the castle from dark dungeon to the airy, open-side top corridors. He had found it, of all places, in the third floor girl's bathroom. Reading into this, he eventually discovered that this was because one of his ancestors, a Gaunt, had been the architect and builder of the pipes for Hogwarts. 

Opening it for the first time was a rush. The sinks parted, revealing a gaping hole, and he jumped down it. It was exhilarating, seeing it. A huge vault door, with an interesting lock made of serpents that whistled wind at a hiss from him. The snakes fled from where the serpent slithering along the edge went, releasing the locks, and he stepped inside. 

It was grand. A huge platform before him, lined with snakes of stone with hollow eyes. It parted into a huge half-circle, with a dip in the center that gathered water so clear it was like it wasn't even there. On the outer edge, water rushed in from the lake and churned in slow ripples, clearing in the canals. The thinner canals either side of the pathway to the chamber supplied the fresh, utterly pure water to the castle, no doubt. 

The wall before him, however, was the most grand. A dragon, the statue huge compared to him, curled up along the wall. The hide of it was polished stone, eyes made of a dozen gemstones of the purest kind. Its neck was separate from the wall, obviously a pipe of some kind cleverly disguised by the carved stone around it. The head at the end remained closed, even as its eyes, sightless, looked forward. 

No doubt, then, that that was where the monster resided. Though he did not know if it was in the dragon's maw, or if it was the dragon itself. 

The chamber also split either side of the dragon in two doorways, and another two opposite sides with thin stone bridges that led to them. After a cursory inspection, he found the rightmost door to be to a huge garden filled with unusual plants that he had never seen before. Signs and old writing on said signs told him what they were, in older english. From the mushroom Namira's Rot to a softly glowing and chiming plant called Nirnroot, it seemed the garden was roost to plants long extinct. 

The leftmost door, opposite, was a huge room of shelves and mannequins filled with old relics and ancient armors of styles he'd never seen before. None, he noted, had dust on them. The shelves were practically overflowing with knick knacks and all sorts of things, to statues of old gods to a small circular room opposite the door that held artifacts with nameplates of Aedra and Daedra below them. All of them, he noted, were protected by thin, impenetrable barriers. 

The second-leftmost door held a huge library that immediately delighted him, and a barrier on the doorway like the other doorways seemed to prevent most moisture from getting in, along with pests, for the books were in perfect condition. A huge window, protected by a barrier also, sat to look into the lake, alongside a sitting area decorated in soft green chairs. All of the shelves were raised a few inches on stone slabs, carved from the very rock itself. Plates showed they were sorted subject, then date. There were three stories worth of shelving, each floor open in a huge U shape around the one below it, with the third being smallest, full of scrolls and books so ancient that he feared that if he so much as touched them, they would disintegrate. 

The thick stone of the bottom floor was contrasted by the dark wood of the second and third. A huge chandelier hung from the ceiling, decorated in what appeared to be the skulls of dragons and huge gemstones and crystals. It reflected the light from the lake-side windows in a kaleidoscope of rainbows. 

A door was also on each floor. The first floor door led to the second rightmost door, which held what appeared to be a room for potion making and alchemy. The second floor led to a room filled with tomes that practically vibrated with ancient magic, along with a desk and dozens of journals of his ancestors on the shelf above it. Ancient ink pots sat on a smaller shelf, along with dozens of quills. A journal still sat open on the wood. 

The third floor was a bedroom, actually. Much smaller, it was cozy and warm, decorated with a bed with green sheets and the softest mattress he had ever felt. The bed itself was made from a dark, dark wood with a brown hue, not unlike dark chocolate. It had poles on all four corners which held carved snakes on them, each with eyes of silver dew drops. A deep green curtain circled the bed, held with rich, warm red ribbons. A warm beige rug sat on the floor, and a large painting of a dragon on a cliff overlooking Hogwarts spanned nearly the entire wall on the right. The left held a small vanity and dresser, along with a bookshelf. The right, below the painting above it, held a small corner desk with an old, long dried inkpot open along with a raven's feather quill still inside it, an empty journal with black leather as its cover sitting on the flat wood. 

This room, unlike much of the chamber, was furnished in straight-edged wood. It was obvious that someone had also put wallpaper over the old wood and painted the room not too long ago, unless it was just preservation charms, for the walls were a warm, soft brown bordered in a much deeper brown. 

Tom got intimately familiar with the Chamber over his time studying in Hogwarts. The Chamber also had no protective charms on the library excepting anti-pest and anti-water barriers, and this was perhaps the thing that did Tom in, in the end. For there were no limitations on the books, the dark magic that Tom had to dive into in his obsession for immortality to better reinstate the Old Rites was his doom. 

It was in his later years, when he figured out the password to the dragon's maw, and released the Basilisk. 

This was the same year that Tom made his first horcrux. It would not be his last. The diary soon sat in the study of the Malfoy family, as madness consumed Tom. His original striving goal to reinstate the Old Rites grew muddied, as his own broken moral compass began to affect him. And with each horcrux, his mind grew more crippled, his magic slower and less precise. The book that Slughorn gave him that started it all lay forgotten, its poisonous curse no longer in the pages but in his head. 

And poor Tom, nay, Voldemort now, was lost. 

=+= 

Dying had… never been in the plan. 

Tom's mind, rotted by his horcruxes and now his lack of body, hovered in Albania. His body was gone, and his dignity marred. But Tom was not angry. No… His lack of a body had drawn him to see _why_ he was dead. Why he had bothered to go after a child at all. You see, without an actual brain, his mind was the clearest it had been since he made the Cup. His soul was a smidge of what it should be, stretched thin like weak plastic. 

His clarity had also drawn his attention to his horcruxes. He could feel them, their minds which were not much separate from his own in the pain. His ousting from his body had shaken them, some of them anyway. The Locket, steeped as it was in ancient, dark magic in the Black house, did not respond at all. The Diadem was a quiet, rippling hum of thoughtfulness. The Diary was a turmoil of bitterness, boredom and loneliness. The ring was a rolling sense in the back of his mind. The Cup was a roiling boil of disgust. 

But his final horcrux was odd. It pulsed with a life other than itself, felt genuine feelings that were not its own but the subject of another's thoughts and life. There was only one, Tom knew, that it could be. 

He hadn't intended to make anything living his horcrux. Not only had they never been made, but he had not known what would happen, putting his soul into anothers. Would he die, when they died? Or would they not die so long as he lived? Would the horcrux die if its host did? What if both he and his living horcrux traded pieces of their souls, so they each shared half of the others. Would they ever die, then? 

It was an attractive idea, he had to admit. Especially as his first death eaters had begun to die, both of old age and disease associated with it. The concept that, in the event of a war, he was the only one to survive, left in the wasteland of his own failure… 

The boy was far too young for him to contemplate, though. By the gods, he would only just be starting Hogwarts! He had much time to think of this, but he did not think he would mind simply looking after the child, his horcrux. Admitting he was lonely was painful- he had his death eaters, but they were less than minions, distant out of fear of the madness he had fallen into. 

So when he found the Nemeton in the depths of Albania, he settled his shredded soul on it, and thought. He thought for a long time, and slept, calling to old gods in hopes that he could repair the damage he had done, to finally do what he had wanted to do, before madness caught in his mind. 

When he woke it was to power, and a beating heart. A full head of chocolate colored hair, and hands he had thought he'd never see again. The rituals he had done, in his madness, had distorted his body. From what he could tell, the positive effects were still there. His reflexes were still ungodly, his arms and legs still strong. He was human once more. 

He might have, quite embarrassingly, nearly danced in the realization of it. A body, hands and fingers and toes. He had a nose again! And his face was just as it should have been, all aristocracy with a straight-edged nose and sharp cheekbones. His mind was as clear as it had been when he hadn't a body, and his brain was fresh and new, ready for learning as it had been before his original one had begun to decay in his head. 

With a body, one with clear thought and no dementia-like symptoms of forgetfulness or anger or the mental issues associated with that dreadful curse that afflicted him before, he could finally decide what to do for himself. The clarity was a blessing, one he quickly used to his advantage. 

His first task? Get back to civilization. 

Tom stood shakily, legs unused to moving despite them being in decent shape. With a sharp twist and a silent hiss, he Apparated. 

He appeared nary a second later in Riddle Manor. Despite its age, the old house was in relatively good shape- if one ignored the blood stains under the new carpet in the dining room, anyway. 

He needed to catch up on what had been happening while he was 'gone' first. So he took a shower, combed his hair neatly, put some colored contacts in his eyes (because going out with bright crimson eyes would immediately make people look twice) to make them more brown than red, and donned some decently fashionable clothes. The deep red robe was nearly black in color, the lining a mercury silver adorned in clothing runes to make them impervious to rain, among other things. Under these were a simple charcoal dress shirt and black trousers. Enough to get by in muggle areas, and not so suspicious to wizarding folk. 

He apparated near-silently to Diagon, and settled in a reputable cafe in one of the branches of it. The cafe, situated on the corner between two commonly-used upper echelon society alleyways, was called Sit & Stew. It wasn't expensive, which was nice, but what was nicer was that it was on the end of Politic Alley, where many politics and officials tended to loiter. 

Not to mention that many expensive shops were here, too, and thus it did not take long for him to spot Lucius Malfoy walking down the alley. A slight sting to the man's mark and he was looking around wildly, before spotting Tom in the window of the cafe. Tom raised an eyebrow at the man, whose complexion paled suddenly, nearly paper white. 

The Malfoy Lord quickly walked inside, situating himself across the table from Tom, who looked at him with sharp eyes as he sipped at his coffee. "Lucius." 

The Malfoy hesitated. Tom waved at him with a single hand, brushing his uncertainty aside. "Just call me Marvolo Gaunt. As far as you know, I am merely an acquaintance. I have come upon… interesting information, referring to our _now dead mutual **friend.**_ " Tom hinted heavily. Lucius nodded slowly, as a sample of fresh cut fish was put in front of him by a nervous waiter. 

Despite his madness, Tom had always appreciated Lucius and his lack of stupidity. While he lacked quite a bit of logic, being wizard raised, he was not the stupidest of the purebloods that Tom had met. In fact, he was one of the more intellectual of them- high praise, considering. 

"And this information?" Lucius probed carefully, after they sat in silence for a moment as they picked at their food- Tom at his strips of meat that he dipped carefully in a meaty sauce, and Lucius at his strips of melt-in-your-mouth juicy fish. 

"I have discovered." Tom murmured, eyes sharp as he glanced up, "That my _father-_ May he stay dead- may have been afflicted by a Dementia Delirium curse." 

The curse- object only, referred to as DD- was a highly illegal curse from very ancient texts. It caused delirium and dementia-like effects, but the effect depended entirely on the mood of the individual, causing angry people to grow abusive and violent, intelligent people to become stupider, and family-accentuated people to begin to forget everyone they loved. It had no cure, and over time, it would rot the brain until it was mush, forcing the body to continue as it rotted from the inside out without the person's knowledge. The increasing effects and rot would eventually kill the host. It was one of few 'diseases' as it was recognized now to be accepted for killing curse assisted mercy killing, because those afflicted by it cannot recognize it at all. 

Lucius nearly choked on his fish. He set his fork down slowly, and wiped at his mouth. "Oh." He said. "But you are better, without him?" 

Without that body, Lucius meant. He was one of few who knew that Tom had ways of regaining his body and staying alive regardless of death. 

"Yes." Tom murmured. "Though, perhaps I can take up his movement. I see, with my fathers absence, things have begun to fall apart. He had lost sense and reason, and forgotten the purpose of it. But before I can do that," Tom paused, his eyes snapping up to Lucius, "I need you to tell me everything I have missed." 

Lucius took a bite of his braised salmon. "It has been some years since your father died." He began, "And no doubt you have only figured out this fact recently. In your absence, the movement has faltered and its numbers have dropped-" _Arrested then,_ Tom thought, "-significantly, but many of us remain loyal. No doubt with new leadership we can finally make some headway into our goals." Lucius casted his strongest privacy and anti-bug charms, along with a subtle anti-animagus barrier. 

"However," Lucius continued once they had both made their location and conversation utterly unavailable to any other, including familiars, "The Potter's prove to be a problem. Since their little brat was declared the Boy-Who-Lived when you died, they have gained much of the populations approval. Their little celebrity is truly a brat, My Lord, and his manners are disgusting. I do not see how people cannot see through it." Lucius scowled. 

Tom considered for a moment, playing with his coffee stirring stick in his mug. "Which boy?" 

Lucius looked taken aback. Tom's suspicion grew. 

"What does the boy look like, Lucius? Which one is the Boy Who Lived?" 

"The red haired one, M'lord. Surely you remember which one you spelled?" The politician frowned. A moment later he was taken by surprise when the Dark Lord, much younger and in his 20's now, threw back his head and began to laugh, a harsh noise of one who knew something another did not. 

"I did not spell the red haired brat." Tom grinned, a sharp edged smile that was truly as dark and frightening as it had been before his new body. "I cast the killing curse upon the other twin. The weak, runty one with black hair and green eyes. Not that pudgy little brat with the red hair and brown eyes. I thought it a mercy that the youngest could pass peacefully. He looked sickly and ill. I did not think he could last longer than a week without intensive medical care. Apparently, I was incorrect, and the boy wanted to live so strongly that even the Killing Curse could not touch him." 

The politician opposite the Dark Lord looked deeply surprised at this, as though he had barely remembered that the supposed Boy Who Lived had a twin. 

" _Hadrian_ Potter, my lord?" He asked hesitantly. "The Potter family very rarely takes him from home, and the few times I have seen the boy he is far too small, and too delicate. Lord Potter barely pays mind to him, and seems almost irritated when his attention is ever drawn to the boy, especially when people ask questions about him. There is rumor that the boy is a squib, and that is why Lord Potter seems so ashamed of him, but I know the boy is not because I have seen his accidental magic carrying books down in the book store to him." 

Tom laced his fingers together and leaned back thoughtfully. So people thought the boy a squib? Surely not, Tom thought, remembering the way the boys magic had flared in response to the killing curse. Then the Potter family… It was suspicious. Did they truly believe the ginger brat to be the one who survived? Or did they think that Harry was a squib because his magic had likely been drained by his stunt, and they put him off as unimportant and put the other forward was the Boy Who Lived for the fame? 

If Tom had been truly dead and stayed that way, they could live off that fame for years, just like Dumbledore had defeated Grindelwald and still held the political power that stunt had given him. 

But Tom was most certainly not dead. He considered his options carefully. 

"Lucius." Tom hummed. "I do believe I know just what we can do." 

]~[ 

Lucius Malfoy was not a very malicious man. No, he was not very cruel at all, despite what many thought. His cold exterior melted when it came to family or friends, but he was not always cold- no, right now he _burned._

For the past week he had listened very carefully to the gossip and tittering of the political class. Hadrian Potter was indeed rumored to be a squib, and after his recent disappearing act on the Potter family (who dragged him back and floo'd him home without even following later that evening, supplies and all, before continuing without him) the rumor mill had began turning out new scraps for him nearly every day. 

But many assumed that, despite him gathering supplies, he was most certainly a squib. 

Rumors also informed him that, recently, Lord and Lady Potter had gotten into screaming matches, one that was loud enough that a neighbouring family overheard. Apparently, it was about sending Harry Potter to Lady Potter's _muggle_ relatives. And, judging from the screaming match and the noises, Lady Potter had sorely lost. 

The neighbours also reported that later that evening, the boy and his father left, trunk in hand, by apparating. The Lord Potter had come back, but with no child or trunk on hand, seeming quite happy with getting it over with. 

This was not so rare, unfortunately. Pureblood or pureblood descended families often got rid of Squib children, and young Harry Potter was just one of many. 

But Lucius knew that Lily Potter's remaining relatives, according to his dear friend Severus Snape, whom was godfather to his child Draco, were a vile people who hated magic. And Lucius knew very well that, despite Lord Potter's opinion, young Harry did have magic. At the very least, he had accidental magic, for he remembered seeing the boy summon books from the top shelves of the bookstore in his youth. 

And Lucius Malfoy was _furious_ that such a child, magical or squib, was left amongst muggles who hated magic, and no doubt would hate a child descended of it regardless if they had it or not. He relayed his findings to his Lord, who now went by the name of Marvolo Morgan Riddle, who was similarly furious. 

Which was why they stood here now, dressed in three piece, expensive muggle suits with harsh eyes and knocking on a muggle's door. 

It had not taken them long, after asking Snape how to locate a muggle's home, to find the boy and where he had been taken. In fact, after asking the man to locate Petunia Dursley, he had done it with ease. When he asked why they wanted the location of Lily's sister, the man had been just as furious as them, and had come along with them in their retrieval of the boy. 

The door was opened by a tall, gangly woman with a too-long neck and a horse-like face, so thin that her face had wrinkles from her 'diet' and that where fat once resided had drooped with extra skin. 

"Who are you?" The woman sneered, suspicion in her beady little eyes. 

"Hello, missus Dursley. I am here to retrieve my descendant, these are my agents S and M here to assist me. We have heard dreadful things, and I believe the boy will do much better under _my_ care than he will ever will under yours. " Marvolo said politely, not quite lying out of his teeth but close enough to screw up Dumbledore when the idiot no doubt used legilimency on the muggle later. The Potters were firmly in the old coot's pocket, and Marvolo had no doubt that this was a plan of the man in the making, sending a perfectly magical child to those who hate magic. 

With that, Marvolo stunned her silently and swiftly, stepping over her limp body into the doorway. Lucius gave her no such respect, and stepped on her on his way in as though she was a doormat. 

Marvolo whispered a locating spell, and his eyes narrowed as it pointed him to the cupboard under the stairs, which glowed faintly with magic. It was a wild sort of magic, crumpled into itself and heavy with fatigue. It glowed faintly with green, and pulsed slowly in a way that told him the boy was asleep. 

A simple _Alohomora_ took care of the lock for him, and he swung the door open. Inside, Harry Potter- still too small, runty looking and thin- lay curled up tightly around a tiny shrunken box that, when looked upon in closer detail, was in fact an obviously shrunken trunk. 

He leaned down, scooping up the too-light ten year old with an ease that unnerved him. 

"Severus, Lucius." Marvolo murmured, drawing the attention of his followers. "Obliviate these… muggle filth of our appearances and assist me in relocating my new heir." 

Severus nodded, glancing in concern at the unconscious boy before going upstairs to deal with the muggles there. Lucius dragged Petunia to the couch and began to work on her memories after a _renervate_. 

Marvolo, meanwhile, took the boy out to the car. Cars had proved useful to him more recently- originally, they were not the best transport over land available. As time went on, they grew more efficient, and he found himself more interested in them. Either way, the black Aston Martin Rapide had served him well since he bought it recently, and it served him well now. He sequestered the child carefully in the back of the car and closed the door, the black tinted windows hiding the child from view of the nosy neighbours he could see peering at him from their windows. 

He settled into the driver's seat, and soon after the two joined him, with Severus in the back to see if the boy had been injured in any way while he was with the Dursleys. 

The car started up, and with a low growl, it rolled off and away from Little Whinging, and began to head north to the new manor by Glossop, just north off of Snake Road in the protected woodlands and valleys of Kinder Scout Reserve. 

And with the modifications made to the car, which was capable of flight just as much as any broom, and its top speeds of over three hundred… well. Let's just say it was a short trip. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter might seem like it doesn't fit into the last chapter very well. The point of that is to make sure that I can get at least one vote for a wand. If I can't, I will just choose a random one using a randomizer.
> 
> But! Here we finally see the new & improved Voldy, just not as moldy or voldemort-y anymore. And because I know you guys are going to ask/complain about the Dementia curse and how it is unproven etc whatever, here is your answer; How he was portrayed in the movies and stuff always bugged me because honestly? He was seventy, by the end of it, but he was ONLY IN HIS FIFTIES when he attacked Harry. This, to me, doesn't make sense at all because we KNOW he was a very intelligent person when he was younger, and he clearly recognized that something was wrong with horcruxes at some point because there was a huge gap between the diary/ring/cup/locket/diadem and his 6th horcrux (which was actually Harry on accident, but was technically nagini to voldemort @ the time because that was the one he chose to make) and the gap was like nearly 20 years? why did he wait so long?
> 
> because most of his horcruxes (the ring/locket/diary/diadem/cup in fact) were made between 1942 & the 1960's or so. This means that he waited TWENTY YEARS to make his sixth horcrux (which was technically his '7th' if you counted the primary soul piece) and therefore had a HUGE GAP between the rest of his horcruxes and his sixth.
> 
> WHY??? He had already made five of them. Why this huge gap? What was he doing, besides the war?
> 
> This was also his 'golden age' during the war, too, because this was around the time when his followers started having children. He was in his near-majority year when he started making horcruxes, so by the year 1945-1950 or so a lot of his followers would have started having kids which doubled his army. But it was around 1970+ where the third generation started coming around and his generation began to die (like Abraxas, the dad of Lucius who died during Harry's fifth year or so in canon) so for what godly reason did he have to not make his final horcrux? WHAT WAS HE WAITING FOR?
> 
> So I began to look into things that might fit well. What did I find? He was around his early 50's when he attacked Harry and the Potters. What could cause this violence instead of a cool thought process that Tom Riddle was known for when he was younger? Perhaps a disease ASSOCIATED WITH OLDER AGE. Frontotemporal Dementia (which causes DISREGARD FOR OTHERS along with violent tendencies depending on the symptoms) can develop as early as 40! What else? What causes Dementia? Alzheimer's. Early onset Alzheimer's can also begin around 40 years of age, and these diseases are associated closely to one another, because they can cause forgetfulness/violence/disregard, etc, symptoms that voldemort shows. So did Voldemort just FORGET about his horcruxes? Probably not. But maybe, because he clearly cant recognize when one was destroyed, and we never really see him check on them, either.
> 
> So in this fic, I considered it. If a curse such as Imperius exists, and can obviously influence the brain itself by prompting actions the conscious mind does not want, can there be a curse to afflict someone with the forgetfulness and aggressive, selfish tendencies of Dementia/Alzheimer like symptoms that you would only see in older adults? Yes! There totally could. Do you see any older wizards and witches, aside from Dumbledore, in the movies? Not really, right? So Wizards and Witches obviously aren't immune to diseases that can be caused by old age (that or they aren't relevant to the plot but shush im ranting). In fact, Dragon Pox is a disease which can easily infect older wizards and did kill off a lot of the older generation, specifically most of Voldemort's generation (like Abraxas, Cedric's grandpapa, Harry's grandparents in canon, etc etc) so obviously older wizards arent immune to diseases, especially not ones that have kill rates for older people like Dementia does.
> 
> So I decided this: In the fic, Voldemort WANTED to fix Magic and the issues around the world. After touching the book that Slughorn pointed him to, though, it planted a curse on him- a mind melting curse not unlike Dementia that took time to build to really fatal levels and began mild but got worse over time. So when he died when he went to attack the potter family, he was freed of it- because it affected his original body's BRAIN, not his SOUL, so when he got a new body and Death & Magic heard his honest prayers that he wanted to fix Magic dying, they gave him a new body- sans the curse. ta-da. a logical, long winded answer.


	3. September 1st

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter words: 4920  
> Posted: 1/7/18 @ 11am  
> Chapter Rating: Teen  
> Warnings: N/A

Albus Dumbledore twinkled down at his new students with satisfaction. 

At the front was young, boisterous Charlus, red hair and glasses and all. Next to him was another red haired boy, though it was more an orange color than red. This boy was Ron Weasley. Good, good… He had been worried the two wouldn't find one another on the train, and Ron was easily manipulated with a handful of gold to spend on himself. Directing the boy to the stone would be done with ease. _But,_ Dumbledore thought, _I need some smarts to balance them out. We wouldn't want the boys to get stuck!_ He chuckled to himself, drawing the sharp eyes of the Slytherins, not that he noticed. Dumbledore was not the most observant, when he was plotting. 

Perhaps, the old man thought, a muggleborn would do? He knew of several candidates this year, but one he already had quite an influence with, having offered her a scholarship. Hermione Granger, Dumbledore twinkled to himself, would do quite nicely. Her book-believing nature would easily allow him to set down a few interesting texts to be picked up and placed for him to direct her with compulsions towards, and she could influence the boys to do their schoolwork, so that they could become aurors among his loyal… And if they didn't do it, she would. Pleased with himself, he rewarded his taste buds with a lemon drop and settled back, satisfied. 

Yes, this year would do very well. And since the younger Potter had not received his letter, and was not in the system, that Dark-cored little boy was out of his hair. He had been concerned that the boy would appear despite Dumbledore's claims to his squibhood, but the boy's magic had been less than Light, too primal to be Dark but not good enough. Either way, the boy had turned out to be resistant to compulsions, no doubt due to his Darker nature than Charlie, and there would be no good in letting that boy talk to his brother, influencing him. The boy had been destined to be a Slytherin, what with all that smart chatter he went along with and his loner personality. 

But a solution came easy to him, just as it always did; James Potter had already been concerned the boy was a squib due to his magics lack of response, no doubt due to the blockers and charms that Dumbledore had cast. A simple confirmation of his 'squib' nature and the boy was gone. And the fact he didn't receive the Hogwarts letter was quite telling. He wondered how quick the boy had starved. Or perhaps he was beaten or bled to death… The submission-aggression wards on the property had been rather strong, and the boy had always been weak in body. 

_Yes,_ Dumbasadoor thought to himself with a sharp satisfaction with himself, _all is going to plan._

But you see, if Dumbledore had paid attention at all to Muggle news, he would have known that Harry Potter was quite dead. Oh, his soul and body remained on this earth- but he was no longer this boy named Harry Potter. Harry had died silently, a too-tiny runt of a boy who starved to death, beaten and besieged by too many broken bones who had been removed quietly but utterly Muggle police from a cupboard under the stairs. The autopsy had shed light on how he died- starvation, a slow death. If he had not starved, he would have died from a punctured lung and shock, and if not that, then the dehydration he had suffered. Dead three times over, Harry Potter was long gone. 

Muggle police were, however, muggle. It was not a body they had found, but a transfigured object cleverly disguised as a corpse. The boy's body, as much as it could be defined as one, had been found after the Dursleys fled their residency after calling contractors in to tear the house down and build it anew and fresh. Their third day, they were looking into the structure of the stairs, having taken down much of the second story. This was where they found the boy after noting the many locks on the door and opening the cupboard after prying them all open forcefully. 

It was decided by police that the boy must not have been heard crying for help under the thick walls of the stairwell as they tore down the second story with the loud equipment, and subsequently died of starvation after three days of not being heard. Nobody asked how long the boy had been without food. Nobody wanted to know. Many of the contracted builders went on leave at the news, and all the while the muggle police still hunted for the Dursleys, who had many days head start. The last they knew the family had been seen in their car on camera heading over the border between Wales and England. 

But it was no muggle that saved the boy who was once a Potter. No, it was the Dark Lord and his two most loyal followers who arrived to whisk the boy away to Snake Road Manor, and it was two of those three who took the boy in personally. All three were fond of the young lad, very much a ravenclaw in his wish to learn, and a Slytherin in his cunning intellect. Yes, the boy had reminded the Dark Lord Voldemort, known to his most loyal as Tom Riddle, of his younger self. 

So the boy was whisked away, spending much of his time at the manor just two kilometers west of the Howden reservoir, nestled amongst the rocky plains and small cliffs, close to a large forest. He spent a year amongst the Dark Lord and his Loyal, learning and loving and being loved by what became his new, adopted fathers. 

His first father, Tom Riddle, was clever and kind in equal measure. Cunning and with a cut of wit, the boy spent much of his time with his newfound kin in his study, being taught and learning in turn from book and tutor. His second father, Severus Snape, was just as cunning, with a wry sense of humor and a sharp tongue, and a quick eye. He learned a lot from his second father too, and their teachings overlapped in equal measure as they taught him of people, politics, the arts of potions and spells, of the runic alphabet and wards, spellcrafting and rituals. 

But perhaps most irritating to the boy was that, despite their obvious closeness, they refused to get any closer for reasons that he could not understand. So the boy taught himself courting and etiquette, and began to make a truly Slytherin move; wooing them both as though they were being wooed by one another. 

So Severus got a beautiful set of golden phials and a set of jeweled stirring rods for his potions, and a basket of expensive potions ingredients, with a tiny tag that the boy whom was once Harry wrote in painstaking exactness, a TMR, exactly the way the Dark Lord did in his personal letters to his Loyal. 

And Tom, in turn, got a beautifully crafted, empty book which had a cover of acromantula silk on the inside, and hard, thin dragonscale of a Venetian Serpent Dragon on the outside, in beautiful black, capped with the reddened iridescent sheen of said serpent dragon. The book, which was empty and filled with fine, beautiful parchment made from baby lambs skin, soft and supple and eager for ink. The book was greatly expensive, especially to Severus and his potions master salary, and charmed with many a rune work to automatically fill with more parchment for every page that the Dark Lord wrote upon. For this one, the boy had spent many weeks copying Severus and his writing style, because he knew if he used a spell to copy it that Tom would catch onto the ruse. Inside, he wrote a sharp, wry note that the book could be used to 'write his silly ideas in,' and was signed by a STS on the bottom right corner of the back of the cover. 

From there, Harry watched in satisfaction as both of them cast warm glares at one another, acting disapproving and approving in turn, subtle flirting glances that the technically twelve year old had clapped giddily at in his room later when reviewing with his Occlumency practice that they both forced upon him. From there, though the shove had certainly helped, they began a slow process of courting one another, and then acting as though they were not doing it. 

But before he could see his wonderfully Slytherin plan pay out, it was September, and he got his letter- technically his second, as his new family kept him for another year to throw everyone off the scent further, and cast a confounding spell to make the Hogwarts registry register him as an eleven year old this year instead of last year. 

Which meant that instead of a year before, he went the same year as his dear, darling brother… Not that his brother knew who he was, to his satisfaction. He didn't want any connections to his old life. 

So he went not as Harry Potter, but as Haytham Malvolio Riddle-Snape. 

~-~ 

Platform 9 ¾ was as packed as ever, stuffed full of well over a hundred people, many of which were parents or family who were squeezing the life out of students of all ages, from tiny eleven year olds to near adults approaching their seventh year with pale faces at the prospects of their upcoming NEWT year. 

The train rumbled idle in its one, singular lane. As always, it was alone, the only train in the platform, lined either side by throngs of people. As always, the Hogwarts Express sat patiently as students trickled on and off and on again, putting trunks away and claiming compartments. As always, it sat alone, a one train army to pull nearly six hundred students to the castle next to the deep, dark lake. 

Perhaps the only unusual thing was the two adults who stood over a small child, smaller than any first year should be despite being twelve already. One of these adults would be going with this child to the ancient castle which housed a school, but the other would be staying home alone, aside from his followers. 

Tom Riddle, wary of the few eyes drifting over them, kneeled down. He hugged Haytham tight, until the tiny boy wheezed, and planted a quick, subtle kiss on his forehead. Releasing him, he then hugged Severus Snape, whom he courted and was courted back by. They shared a chaste, quick, light kiss and stepped back, staring at one another for a long moment, until their little brat latched onto both of them. 

"You guys can kiss and stuff when Dad gets to his office." Haytham declared, for Severus did indeed have a Floo in his quarters and office at Hogwarts, "Right now is me time! I won't get to see you with classes." He informed his Father, who smiled at him with a fond roll of his eyes. 

"You will see me quite often, methinks, what with your dad and I being in contact near constantly. And we both know you will try to finagle your way into staying in his quarters anyways." 

Haytham did not reply, which was the most Slytherin response he could think of. 

"Get on the train." His dad sighed at him. 

Haytham picked up his trunk, and bolted with a call of 'Love you!' as he swept into the train like a miniature, dark-haired hurricane. A startled upper year nearly fell to get out of the determined first years way. 

In a mere two minutes, he found and claimed an empty compartment. A few older years attempted to claim it, to which he glared mightily and stuck a sticking charm on the back of his chair and stuck himself to it. When they couldn't remove him, the gryffindors just left, muttering grumpily the whole time. 

His tiny version of king of the compartment didn't need to last long, though, because the train started moving ten minutes later, a slow chug that soon turned to a fast, even, soft rolling motion of the train going over hills and odd flats of it going over roadways. He pulled out a book, sprawled across the entire bench (not that he used much of it) and began to read. 

He read for a long while before anyone opened his compartment door, a quiet boy who watched him warily. Haytham watched him back. The boy was thin and lanky, tall but quiet with a gaunt face and an eerie aura. He reminded him vaguely of Bellatrix and her aura, which was like a strong, violent kink in a hose compared to most people, but the boy was more of a bump in the road. Just a bit wrong, compared to most. 

"Hello." Haytham said. "I'm Haytham. Who are you?" 

"Theodore Nott." The boy said back, cobalt eyes watching him warily, narrowed. 

"Want to sit?" Haytham offered after a moment. Theodore sat. 

Haytham sat up in a fluid movement, sharp green eyes examining the boy across from him. Theodore Nott sat stiffly, watching him back. 

"What do you think your house is going to be?" Theodore asked. 

"Ravenclaw or Slytherin." Harry answered automatically. "My parents have a bet going on, so I am aiming for Slytherin." 

For a moment the other boy looked amused, like the answer wasn't something he expected. "My father wants me to go to Slytherin, but I don't think I would mind Ravenclaw. My mum was a ravenclaw." Nott admitted quietly. "Besides, it seems like Ravenclaw would be quieter." 

Haytham tilted his head. "Ravenclaws? Maybe. I think Slytherin would be pretty quiet, if you didn't care for politics. But I can't really avoid those, with who my father is. And besides, in Slytherin I would be closer to my dad, so I can't complain." 

Nott looked confused, so Haytham continued, "Ravenclaws would read a lot, I think, but they would also get into arguments about what book is right about what thing. Ravenclaws are the people who make theories, and when those clash they would probably argue all the time about it. At least Slytherins would try and find the logical solution to the problem, if people argued, even if some of them would totally stab you in the foot to turn in the essay they copied from you first so you are the one that gets detention for copying them when they totally copied you first." 

Haytham paused. "But Ravenclaws would do that too, I suppose. Ravenclaws like good grades, but they like learning, too. Slytherins like getting good grades to pull more weight, and learning things that might be useful to them to exploit in the future, like a loophole in wizarding law or something. Gryffindors… I don't know about them, I don't think they learn at all. Hufflepuffs tend to get decent grades because they work hard, but I know that a lot of them can also be lazy. But some people are just naturally lazy. You can find a lazy person in ravenclaw just as easily as Hufflepuff, anyway." 

"You talk a lot, don't you." Nott said, sounding faintly amused. Harry shot him an innocent, wide eyed stare. The boy paused, looking faintly startled, and then shot a narrowed-eyed stare at him, a considering look to his eyes. "You pull that off way too well." 

Harry shrugged. "Both of my dads are Slytherin. One from a Ravenclaw and Slytherin descended family, and the other from a family that has never once, not even once, strayed from being a snake. I've been fed snarky one liners and vile, heart-stopping glares. I just happen to be better at fooling authority, because I had to get better. My dads are wicked sharp at catching lies." 

From there, another boy joined them. This one was chocolate skinned with deep, dark eyes and introduced himself as "Blaise Zabini." and introduced it in a flat, distant tone. He knew Theodore, though, and sat next to him. The boy was quiet and seemed more focused on listening to their quiet conversation with a single ear. The other, you see, had a small music playing device on it. 

Eventually the three got comfortable, chatting and staying quiet much of the trip. The eight hours on the train seemed to stretch infinitely, and eventually the boys got tired. Eleven (and twelve) year olds were not meant to be bored for too long, and with nothing to do they began to contemplate nap time. 

Blaise had long since made himself comfortable stretched across the bench, and neither he nor Theodore seemed to give a care that his head had planted itself in the brown-haired boys lap. The only notice that Theo seemed to give this was to glance at Harry, as though expecting something. Harry raised an eyebrow and grinned cheekily at him, and the other boy flushed with embarrassment, but made no note of the other boy in his lap. 

It was approaching the last hour when their compartment door was shoved open rather rudely by a brown, bushy haired girl with a rather rude demeanor. 

She said, "Have any of you seen a toad? A boy named Neville's lost one." 

She then seemed to take notice of Blaise and his position with his head on Theo's lap, for her face twisted up in disgust. "That's wrong, you know, for two men to lay together." 

Harry gave the obviously muggleborn girl a sharp, biting smile. "No, not here it isn't. You see, here your arguments are invalid, as men with magic can give birth just fine, and as my fathers are both quite male, I assure you it is part of the culture here. You can take your faintly quite rude Muggleborn beliefs and put them in a neat little box while you exist in the wizarding world, lest you insult quite a few people. And when not in the wizarding world, you can brush off the dust and believe whatever you wish. Besides, they're eleven." He then promptly shut the door in her face and locked it, ignoring the rattling of it for a minute until the rude girl left. The other two boys didn't say a word, but shared a look that Harry ignored. 

Nary an hour later and he was finally at Hogwarts, shuffling off of the train and pressed tightly to Blaise and Theo by the throng of students. A huge man with a huge beard called out, and dozens of tiny first years wiggled through the crowd to him. Harry noticed, to his consternation, that he was the shortest among his classmates, despite actually being a year older. 

As a group, the young first years huddled around a bunch of docks that seemed to be made of old wood and stone in equal measure. Harry was quite certain that if the wood had not merely been slats to add some color to the carved stone that the docks would not be standing, they were so old. The wood was also quite rotted from thousands of years of wear and tear from tiny feet, and they creaked alarmingly under the huge mans weight. 

The boats were barely better, tiny things carved with even tinier animals that dipped and tipped quite alarmingly. The three boys held onto one another carefully as they sat in them. A slightly chubby boy sat with them, shaking slightly. He would be shaking too, if he couldn't feel the Buoyancy and anti-flood charms that riddled the scrappy little boats. 

They zoomed forward through the water towards a little archway that Harry greatly suspected was actually made to be blocked once a sewer or water grate, for it was far too low for any boat naturally- not that he would hit his head on the top of the arch, even if he didn't duck. Blaise, who was much taller than him, would most certainly have if he hadn't. 

The castle itself was beautiful. Huge and lined in evenly cut stones, it was a mosaic of ancient dust that settled on even older walls, and was supported by arches that, when he looked closely, were far too reptilian to be birds, and with too many legs to be snakes. Lights hung from old chain that was looped through or over these arches, and paintings lined the walls. 

Ancient banners, unspelled excepting for preservation, hung limp and huge. Hand-crafted, they were moth-eaten and dusty, the color of the dye long having begun to fade into dull colors. A slytherin banner that was once a bright viridian green showed a snake of silver, and was now dull with age. Holes and burn marks marred it. It was one of few where it belonged, as many of the other house banners hung mostly unmarred, excepting those which bugs or time had worn the thread. Many slytherin banners were missing outright. 

Harry had heard from his fathers the hatred of the house of snakes, but never had he expected it to be so far that the banners once hung by Salazar himself had been burnt and torn down, with only shreds of burnt green thread remaining to hang where they once resided. 

The Great Hall, however, was decorated with Slytherin banners in mostly good repair. The Slytherin coat of arms lay on a metal shield on the back wall across from the Head Table, at the end of the Slytherin table. Ravenclaw's shield sat a row over from it, and on the opposite side of the huge doorway was the Hufflepuff shield, which sat close to the ruby red of Gryffindor's. 

One by one they were called up to be sorted. 

Then, he was called. "Haytham Riddle-Snape!" 

Haytham winked at his two shocked friends, and went to sit on the stool. The hat was plopped onto his head, well worn. 

_Quite a mind you have, Mister Riddle. Not unlike your father, who I see is finally achieving the greatness he could have had, had he not had his mind tampered with. Yes, your mind is quite suited to the house of your fathers. Slytherin would do well for you, and your political cunning. Gryffindor is not suited to you nearly so well, however, as you plan and think ahead. You do not do the things you do for glory, but instead because they have to be done. Hufflepuff would not suit you either. Their friendship and loyalty would do you well, but you are far too cunning for them. You are hardworking, but most certainly not in the way of the hard labor that Helga favored, no… You work for the end goal. Salazar would be proud to have you in his house, and Rowena would burn me if I didn't put you into hers, but while you like to learn, you learn to use it, and that was always the biggest difference between Salazar and Rowena, in the end. No, you will do quite well in-_

**_"Slytherin!"_**

Haytham got off the stool, sat the hat on it, and swept to the Slytherin table, pleased with himself. 

His dad looked similarly so at the head table, where many of his coworkers had begun to squint at him. 

"I didn't know you had a son, Severus." Dumbledore said genially, after the last child- a Blaise Zabini- was plopped into Slytherin House by the Hat, and dinner began nary a minute after the dark-skinned boy sat next to Haytham and proceeded to smack him lightly up the head at his response to something. 

"Yes, I do." Severus answered, scowling a little. "Not that I knew that for quite a while. His father- his carrier parent, that is- had not informed me, and came back not long ago after a relative of his died, leaving him to inherit quite a bit of monies and land. It was from there where I found that I had a son, when we met up again." 

Minerva, excited, had to refuse to submit to the urge to slam her hands on the table and cheer at this discovery, and perked up noticeably. "Thats who you've been courting!" She accused, pointing a finger at Severus, who flushed very, very slightly. 

"Yes." Severus admitted. Flitwick nearly fell off his chair, bouncing in joy. Quietly, Sinistra handed some money to Babbling with a scowl. Babbling looked quite pleased with herself. Quirrell gave Severus a quiet congratulations, which Severus accepted. 

But Dumbledore was not pleased. 

"And who is the man?" He asked, the twinkling in his eyes furious to hide his own suspicion. 

Severus hummed, finishing his bite of steak. This is where he had to get it just right, he knew. "His name is Thomas Malvolio Riddle. His mother named his first name for his father, supposedly, but neither of us know if this is accurate. His father gave him his middle and last name. Thomas never met his father, because he sent him and his mother away from Britain due to some political issue, but they exchanged letters frequently. His father died recently, so Thomas came back to inherit the British magical titles. With him came Haytham, who is my son by blood. We met when I was apprenticing twice, once in France and once in Spain. We did not think we would see one another again. Apparently, Fate had other plans." He said, pleased with himself. 

Dumbledore did not say anything more, but he looked very displeased. 

As the feast ended and Severus and the other Professors went to either the dorm rooms or their offices, Dumbledore plotted on his way up to his office. He could not let his most useful pawn go, and most certainly not to Tom Riddle's bastard child! 

~-~ 

Dumbledore had not expected this. 

Yes, the wizarding world was very welcoming to magical couples, be they of the same gender or not, but Dumbledore had figured that Tom would never sire a child. The compulsions and the spell should have made Tom utterly unlovable, and his birth by love potion should have made him incapable of love. There was no possible way that Tom _could_ love, not as he was, and most certainly not even as a child had the boy ever seem interested in love. 

And yet the boy had obviously done _something_ to be attractive or to care for the other parent of the bastard child he had, because he sent them away. Why? Tom had been possessive. There shouldn't have been a reason, and he most certainly was arrogant by his later years, too arrogant to assume he couldn't protect his child and his… hm. Wife? No, likely not a wife. No, this was probably a tryst that managed to have a child. 

Which made it more frustrating that he had not kept track of Tom in his younger years. Judging by the fact that Severus met the other man when apprenticing while they were both being mentored, there was very small gap in age when it came to how young the boy had been when they met. There was no way this Riddle could be over fourty, at _maximum,_ so Tom had met someone either just out of Hogwarts or during his last year. That, or he could have met them when he was travelling the world after Dumbledore got Dippet to reject his application. 

That was, perhaps, the most concerning. If Tom met someone and took them back to Britain with him, the mother could have been the holder or only possible heir to another line, which could give the boy power outside of Britain. Dumbledore had much less hold on Tom's child if he was born someplace other than Britain too, and British-raised children _always_ went to Hogwarts, if he could make them. Few purebloods would let their children go to inferior schools, but Tom _wasn't Pureblood, no matter how much he wished the boy was!_ Purebloods held at least some sort of loyalty to their schools because of ancestry and all that bosh, but Tom's only loyalty to Hogwarts was the fact he was a distant heir to Slytherin. He could have easily sent his child elsewhere for a better education, one with _Darker,_ more _violent_ and truly _despicable_ leanings, like that school in South America that had no restrictions on magic learned there at all! 

At least Durmstrang didn't allow research on the Unforgivable Curses! 

But, he reminded himself, he needed a new Dark Lord. Obviously, Tom had not made the Horcruxes despite his spellwork and compulsions, because his child had inherited his seats. And without a Dark Lord, he needed a new one for Charlie to kill. It was a good thing that there was a perfect candidate in Tom's grandchild, and he didn't need to sacrifice his pawn Severus if he could sacrifice his child or husband to the Boy Who Lived. Then, after Charlie had killed his Dark Lord, he could plan to place Charlie as the next Dark Lord… 

After all, Dumbledore had all the time in the world, what with touching two of the three Hallows. Now, if only he could find the third… Two would expand his lifespan a great ways, after all, but the third? If he could find that one, he could truly rule over all, even Death itself. 


	4. A Month To Spend With Newfound Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter words: 5402  
> Posted: 1/16/18 @ 7pm  
> Chapter Rating: General  
> Warnings: N/A

The dungeons were cold, huge, and built in a way that made them seem like a huge maze. It was down here where you could see that this castle wasn't built originally for housing students. Deep, round holes told of where metal bars used to be, and cavernous dips in the walls showed where the place had been gutted. Odd stains had seeped into the stone here, too. 

Down here there were only two bathrooms- one for each gender, tucked under the stone stairwell that led down here, carved into the very stone, and the ones in the Slytherin commons. As the Slytherin house went deeper, it got colder, and carvings began to adorn the walls rather than portraits, for not even magical ones could stand the moist air here. The walls faded from perfectly cut stone to occasionally oddly cut ones, filling in holes where the natural cave the dungeons had built into could not. 

The first years huddled closer, and a few of the upper years- obviously full of pity for them- cast a few warming charms on them. As they went deeper, dragons and serpents on the walls began to light warm, pleasant, if oddly colored fires in their mouths, like torches. Carvings like birds reared their heads to hold up the walls, old and dusty with age. Many were in poor repair. Some were crumbling. 

The entrance to their common room was, as the prefect put it, 'two dragons and six snakes down, hidden in the coils of the Ashwinder.' 

The only semi-modern looking carving was indeed the Ashwinder, which was lit with a pleasant, warm glow. The stone serpent turned ruby eyes to look at them, and peered closely at them. It hissed, low and garbled, _"Password?"_ though it sounded more like it lisped than it actually said the word, stone and ash tongue flicking out at them. The seams of its scales glowed with faint light and warmth. 

The prefect- the girl, this time- bowed her head and put her hand over her heart, fingers curled slightly. Respectful, and pureblood. "We, Slytherin, ask for your guardianship over our dorm for yet another year at Hogwarts, great Ashwinder." 

The serpent regarded them, gemstone eyes glittering with fire. When it hissed next, it was nearly human-tongue, enough that even a stupid person could hear the imitation of english. 

_"Drem Yol Lok, tiny Kro, and welcome to Slytherin, the house of the cunning and clever."_

It pulled back, unwinding its several yards of coiled stone into the walls until it looked like three arches of glowing, scaled stone had been layered together. The serpent turned to watch them as they went inside, and then coiled itself up once more once the last student- a blonde third year- made it inside. The other head on the end of its tail watched them with ruby, fire lit eyes. 

The common room was very different compared to the dungeons. Casted in old stone brick and lit by lanterns that gleamed almost greenish gold in the mouths of the serpents who held them, it was furnished in warm browns and a variety of different shades of green. A huge fireplace casted a warm light into the room, and huge windows showing the lake gleamed with light cast through the dark water. Fish darted around, watching them with beady eyes. 

Above them, a huge arching hall had two more floors, each one a 'U' shaped balcony around the ones below it. The left side of the common room held the rooms, the oldest on the bottom, the youngest in the middle, and the in-betweens on the top. Each year had varying amounts of rooms, and therefore varying and mind boggling amounts doors (three per gender, along with a seventh door for the not-quite-gendered on the bottom row) on each floor, some of which did not match the dimensions of the rooms behind them. The right side of the common room hall held the library, which spanned the two floors in the huge U-shaped alcove and its balcony above it, and the top floor held the duelling room, which was supposedly capable of acting similarly to the myth of the 'Room of Requirement,' from hanging, moving duelling platforms to mazes and small arenas for duelling. 

Haytham's eyes glinted in the firelight at the thought of getting his hands on that duelling room, much less the library. While his father was here, he had warded the shelves and commons to hell and back. A Deepest Darke book could be hiding in the shelves and look as docile as a cookbook here. 

He turned his attention from nearly salivating over the dusty texts to the Prefect when they began to talk. 

"We have simple rules in Slytherin. The first; House is family. All of you will leave with some sort of leaning to Slytherin, somehow, in some way. In school, either on break or no, you will stand by your housemates. You can argue and curse one another all you like in the commons, but outside the dorms we stand as a united front, because trust me, nobody else excepting the Slytherin teachers like Professor Snape, our head of house, or Sinistra will help you. Never walk alone, and clump together. Especially you, younger years. Gryffindors are like scavenging birds- they circle the weakest among us, and right now, that is _you._ You won't always be in range of the older years, and they will try and pick on those who are alone. I've seen gangs of Gryffindors go hunting for Slytherins before, and it never ends well. Professor Snape has experienced this before, so if it happens to you, go to him. He'll help you draw out the memory and cap it in a vial, while its fresh and vivid. Memory evidence is _never exempt,_ and always welcomed even if it was taken by force, because memories can't lie without being obvious. Tampered memories always show it, even if they don't when they're in your head." 

Nods and shuffling from the crowd of Slytherins, both those who had heard this speech before and those who hadn't. 

"Excellently put, Prefect Lynch." Professor Snape drawled, sweeping into the commons with an easy sort of grace that would make a normal person cry. "Any of you, old or young, small or tall, can come to me for any sort of assistance you may need, should I not be busy at the time. Whether it be your home life, your identity, or your magic, I will not judge you or persecute you for it. The only thing I will _not_ accept visits for," And here, Snape's eyes glinted maliciously, "Is one of you coming to me to whine about how the other children do not respect you. Respect is not a name, or blood, or heritage. Respect is earned, be it by magic, strength, wisdom, or power, and do not expect a single person here to automatically respect you because you are a Pureblood, or because you descend from the Druids, or even Merlin himself. Do not expect anything to come your way. You are not a Hufflepuff. You are Slytherin, and Slytherins do not sit idly by while the world revolves without them. You will learn, you will grow, and you will be more powerful for it." 

Severus examined the huddles of children and teens, and nodded sharply. "I expect all of you up at eight tomorrow. I will be giving you three days, as is required, to memorize your schedules. Upper years, I expect you to lead the First years around and teach them the lay of the castle. First years, now is the time to form your little traveling groups. Always travel together, even if you would rather strangle the Slytherin you are with. It is survival that comes first, not pettiness or anger. I suggest that you stay in during curfew. Further rules and clubs will be posted on the bulletin board, and the weekly password will be updated there. Don't forget it, or you might find yourself locked out until someone pities you enough to let you in." 

With that, they were herded into their rooms. Haytham, Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini were to share a room. Draco Malfoy, Crabbe and Goyle were in the other room. In the third room at the end where the girls dorms were (the floor would suddenly slide out from underneath you if you were a boy trying to go to the girls dorms, and all of the older girls on the bottom floor could hex a man's balls off if he tried) is where Pansy Parkinson, Daphne Greengrass, Tracey Davis, and Millicent Bulstrode resided. As none but older years were allowed to room alone, Hogwarts expanded the first years girl dorms instead, as normally the dorms were in groups of three. 

Haytham and his roommates settled in, placing trunks and commandeering their dressers. Harry examined the curtains on the four poster bed for a long moment before deeming them acceptable, dressing in his softest sleeping clothes, and conking out on the bed that was more like a cloud. 

~-~ 

The first day of classes was excellent. First was lunch- a heart english breakfast. Harry buttered an english muffin and put some fresh strawberry jam on it, humming on the pleasant, fresh bread as he bit into it blissfully. Along with that was some bacon, and he served himself some scrambled eggs from the variety of types of eggs on the platter, of which there were several. The upper years were also passing down some foods like honey and sugary cinnabuns, which were devoured by the starving first years avidly. 

Their schedules were handed out by their Head of House, who ruffled his hair subtly on the back of his head as he passed. Haytham squinted at his classes. 

They were a mix of Periods- one hour classes- and Blocks- two hour classes- and seemed to have even times for each. Their first block was, as it was Monday, Transfiguration. Then there was a block of Charms. Then lunch. After that was a single period of History, and then a block of potions. Then they had break- free time that lasted a few hours where third years and up had classes- and bed. 

Tuesdays started with Potions and then Herbology. Lunch. A single hour of Charms, and then their first class of Defense Against the Dark Arts. Wednesday was the same, except Herbology and DADA were switched. Thursdays were Charms and Transfiguration, and then lunch, a period of History, and then Potions again. After Dinner at about nine (two and a half hours after dinner finished, though Dinner was served at 6 o'clock on the dot) was Astronomy. This repeated on friday, except that Astronomy was a block and not a period. 

There were no classes on weekends excepting first years, a required class for learning to fly a Broomstick. These were not optional, excepting those with issues or health causes for not riding them, and to pass you had to have at least one class, and had to pass a list of requirements. While it isn't _required to pass the class,_ you did have to take at least one class, and to play Quidditch or any broom sport, you had to pass the class. 

Haytham had the same schedule as the other first year Slytherins, of which there were nine. The Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws each had seven new first years, and the Gryffindors had gained ten. Each subject was shared with a different house. Slytherin was paired with the Gryffindors for Potions and Transfiguration, they were paired with Hufflepuffs for Herbology and History, and they had Ravenclaws to pair with in Charms and Astronomy. 

_Honestly,_ Haytham grumped to himself at seeing who they were paired with for potions, _its like they want us to kill one another!_

And lo and behold, their first potions class was exactly that. Transfiguration passed quickly, with the Lions and Snakes eyeing one another from across the huge room with narrowed eyes and suspicious glances. Harry managed to turn his match into a needle, eye and all, but putting it back was more difficult due to the fact that metal and living wood had different sorts of cells. It was always easier to turn something living (or once living, in the case of the wood on the match) into something nonliving than it was to turn it the other way 'round. 

Charms was much the same, with the Gryffindors gathering courage and the Slytherins huddling together, wands in their sleeves and eyes narrow. The Gryffindors had trouble with the charm- one that caused things to float- but quite a few of the Slytherins got this right, mostly because there wasn't a single unmagically raised among them, and a lot of them saw their parents use it on a daily basis. (Well, perhaps not Harry, because Severus often just lifted the things he needed or used a summoning charm and Tom showed off by using a Banishment Spell that was redirected to give the thing he wanted to him directly- which was NOT how the spell was meant to be used, because it took too much effort- but he did it anyway, the show off.) 

Haytham spent much of his time in that class zooming his feather around and tickling the castle walls, and at one point succeeded in making a brick (which was one of the enchanted ones) sneeze itself right out of its place. Flitwick then gave him a point and had to levitate it back into where it was supposed to be. 

History involved basically nothing the whole hour, because they ended up being too drowsy after fifteen minutes, much less an hour, to even glare at one another. 

But Potions is when it got interesting. 

The Slytherins slipped into the classroom easy as ever, of course, seating themselves on the desks. Each desk had one burner on the left side, small enough to heat a medium cauldron but perfectly sized for their small pewter ones. In this class, because they could only be partners and not groups, Theodore and Blaise partnered together and left Harry with Draco Malfoy, who wasn't the worst sort and certainly would have been Harry's first choice anyway, seeing as Draco was Severus's godson and had lessons from him. 

Draco, on the left, set his pewter cauldron carefully in the center of the burner, and Harry unrolled his potions kit, which was filled with tiny jars of home-picked ingredients from his Dad's potions garden. The high quality ingredients were much better for potion making anyway. Because of how they had sat- Draco on the left and Harry on the right- Harry would be mincing and cutting all the ingredients, and Draco would be timing the stirs with a pocket watch. When Harry was done preparing the next ingredient, it was his job to hold the ingredients carefully to the side (to prevent juice dripping in before it was time, depending on the ingredient) and then drop them in the _second_ that Draco said to. 

Harry and Draco had to rely on Draco's expensive little Potions Watch for this, which could be set to the potion they were making beforehand to get the timing as accurate as possible. 

These two jobs were things that Potions Masters had to be perfect at when brewing alone. Preparing ingredients beforehand was only good if you knew what you were doing, and because the juice of ingredients had their own properties, you had to be very careful on what you were doing, because just tossing in newly prepared ingredients wasn't always what the potion needed. Some of them needed _only_ juice, and some needed the ingredients sans juice, which is why preparing them beforehand was needed. 

So Harry began to put together a special item used for potions. A strainer, but not the kind you are thinking of. It was a tall little thing, with four bars on each side. The round disk, sort of like a petri dish, on the top had a bottom that was very carefully magicked to only let juice through. You would place the ingredient in this and a jar on the bottom so that as you were preparing ingredients, it would separate the juice and the ingredient itself, so that you could use whatever the potion called for. It also made the ingredient easier to preserve for later use, but it took time and it was more expensive to buy them already separated, so Harry did not bother. 

Many of the other Slytherins were also doing this. Some didn't have strainers, and were borrowing others from close allies or friends. Blaise brought his. Vincent Crabbe, not nearly so stupid as many assumed for his bulk, had also brought his, as Vincent had had a good tutor for potions too (One of the Keller family, a line of german potioneers who were… not stupid, to put it simply) though Gregory Goyle had not had one of the best and would be instead filling in for the timing rather than ingredient prep. Daphne Greengrass also had a strainer, and had lent her extra to Millicent Bulstrode, who was the one extra Slytherin and therefore had no partner. 

The Gryffindors piled in soon after the Slytherins set up shop, more like a herd of buffalo in a tea shop than students in a classroom. One of them dropped their potions kit, the leather-wrapped jars clacking against one another harshly as it hit the ground. Both Haytham and Draco winced, knowing that half of those ingredients had probably been bruised and ruined even if the jars were unbreakable- though judging by the drops of wetness growing on the soft cloth on the outside that held the kit together, they weren't even charmed properly. A cheap kit then, the ones that apothecaries sold for a handful of galleons. 

The Gryffindors rowdily claimed tables, partnering with best friends and people unknown. One of them, pale and nervous, did not partner with a Gryffindor, but instead Millicent Bulstrode. This one, they would learn later, was named Neville Longbottom, and he did not like being a Gryffindor, and went there to honor the memory of his parents by the unsubtle hinting of his family. This left a bushy-haired muggleborn that none of the other Gryffindors seemed to like alone, but she didn't seem to care whatsoever, to eager to learn. A know-it-all, they would learn, with no sense of politeness or of the Wizarding culture. 

Suddenly, the door slammed open, a loud knocking noise as it banged into the stone (actually, Haytham could see the tiny bit of magic that it knocked against to make the noise. It didn't damage anything at all. Clever Hogwarts!) and Severus Snape himself swept into the room, eyes dark. 

"Sit." He said, voice vaguely threatening. The students sat. 

"I have taught potions here for many years, and I can tell you now that amongst this class many of you will not succeed into your OWL year." Snape began, silencing them with his eyes and voice alone, "I see a few who hold promise, however, I believe many of you will barely believe this to be magic. Potions are one of the most dangerous kinds of magic you can practice in life or classes both, and I will have no wands," Here he glared sharply and a few students stuffed their wands in their bags or pockets, "nor any foolishness in here for it. As we progress through the years, many of you will find that if you do. _Not. pay. **Attention.**_ That you will lose fingers, hands, toes, faces and skin to the potions that we may one day brew. Potions are dangerous, and can kill you if you are not careful." 

Here, Snape turned sharply, chalk in hand, and began to write on the board. His writing was crisp, clean, and slightly spidery, just enough to be mistaken for half-cursive but not quite. The chalk wrote thick, clean lines and the letters were slightly blocky to be read more clearly. 

On the board, he wrote cleanly this; 

_Potions Safety_

  * _Place your cauldron exactly center on the burner to spread the heat evenly_
  * _Unroll your potions kit and stirrers on the right of the table and take out required ingredients only_
  * _Always wear gloves made of Acromantula Silk or Dragonhide. If a potion requires you to use specific items (such as leather gloves or iron stirrers held in a bare hand) always follow the recipe._
  * _For potions with an acidic base (such as those that require the input of lemon juice or acidic ingredients before brewing) always be aware of what kind of acidic they are, and wear Potioneering Goggles to prevent splashing and eye injury._
  * _Always be aware of your surroundings and be prepared to slam the Guardian Ward on the table if a potion is bubbling erratically or is preparing to explode, or if a cauldron is beginning to melt or give to the potion inside of it._
  * _In event of a potion bubbling over or melting through the cauldron, get onto your stool and stay there until (professor snape) can get rid of the potion. If the potion is acidic, get onto the tables instead, as their legs are obsidian lined and the stools are not._
  * _Should a student be injured, another student who knows basic healing can assist (professor snape) in stabilizing the students who are also harmed. Brewing must stop in event of injury by using the Time Stopping wards on the tables so that (professor snape) can make sure that the injury does not require immediate removal of the student to high-intensity hospital care._



Professor Snape turned to eye them all with dark eyes. "I expect all of you to memorize this to the best of your ability. By the time you leave my class, you will have this engraved into your eyelids or so help me I will call upon the Board to put you into the first year class again next year." 

The students shivered at the thought and nodded. 

"How many of you brought journals for Potions class?" Professor Snape asked. All of the Slytherins, the muggleborn Gryffindor girl, Neville Longbottom, and a couple of others (mostly purebloods) raised their hands and pulled out their journals. 

"Copy this information down. I want all of you to get journals to put your potions notes in by the end of this week or I will knock your grade down half a letter. Potions Safety can be seen in most potions books, including your first year test, _Magical Drafts and Potions,_ on the 2nd page in roman numeral." 

Haytham, who had a copy of that book with him and read it, already knew this. Judging by the looks of the other students, some hadn't even opened the book yet and did not. 

Professor Snape gave them ten minutes to copy down these things and set up shop for the potion they were going to be making. Double potions (a double period and therefore called a 'block') lasted two hours, twice the time of a normal period, and they had quite a bit of extra time (nearly an hour and a half) to get brewing by the time the Professor cleared the board with a tap and began to write the recipe. 

Haytham and Draco both copied the recipe for the Cure For Boils Potion down in their journals diligently. 

Going by the recipe was pretty simple. Harry and Draco each added six snake fangs to their mortar and pestles (you needed four full measures, so they would each prepare six fangs) and crushed them diligently. The muggleborn witch looked very frustrated and focused by this, for her lack of partner. Draco and Harry carefully poured their measures into the cauldron they had taken off the boiler (which was warming to 250 degrees at the moment) and then each prepared six more. They added those. Harry checked the temperature of the boiler again (it was nearly there) and Draco set his watch to ten seconds, holding it carefully as Harry lifted the cauldron. The second it reached 250 degrees, he put it on the boiler and Draco started his watch. On 10 seconds, Draco waved his wand over the cauldron carefully. The potion bubbled lightly, and began to simmer. 

They waited for thirty-three minutes watching their classmates catch up. It was boring. 

After that, Harry added four horned slugs (with slime) to the potion, and Draco carefully lifted it off the heart. They waited five seconds, and then added a porcupine quill each. Five more seconds. They put it on the heat again, and Draco used a basic stirring rod to carefully stir it clockwise five times. Harry turned off the burner and they took it off the heat, and then carefully began to bottle the solution. 

Two other groups were at this stage- Millicent Bulstrode and her partner Neville, who she had stopped from putting porcupine quills in early, and Theodore and Blaise. Daphne and Tracey similarly finished theirs. 

The tiny pewter cauldron gave them a couple of vials of the Boil Cure, and after they stuck a name tag on one Draco went up to put their sample on Professor Snape's desk as Harry bottled the rest. These would go into the little box on Professor Snape's desk to be checked and then donated to the infirmary, if they were good enough quality. 

The Boil Cure, which was supposed to be a soft cobalt blue, was the correct color for most of the slytherins (excepting Millicent and Neville's, which was a bit more teal colored than blue as it should have been) but the Gryffindors had horrendous samples to turn in. One of them was a gross yellow green, and the other an odd brown. The Muggleborn took longer but took in a soft baby blue, and was obviously frustrated at it being the wrong color. 

Harry packed his ingredients back into his kit as Draco went to clean his cauldron in the back sink. As Harry put his kit in his bag, Draco dried his cauldron and set it in his own, and they wiped down their table diligently as the rest of the Gryffindors finished up. 

Professor Snape eyed them all the while, sweeping up and down the aisle. He didn't say much, but occasionally would reward or take points. He took points three times off of Neville, Ron Weasley, and Ron Weasley's partner, but awarded points quietly to Neville and Millicent when they corrected one another, and to the Slytherins for their teamwork. 

Two of the Gryffindor pairs didn't get to turn in anything, one because they melted straight through the bottom of the cauldron by never setting the heat and letting it just keep warming up hotter and hotter, and the other because they put the porcupine quills in when the heat was on it. 

Other than that, not much happened. It was school. Nothing happens in school. 

Haytham learned a lot about Draco Malfoy, though. The boy was the heir to the Malfoy family, and while he had the ego expected from the child of the Minister's advisor, he wasn't awful. While pompous he wasn't overly inflated, and his attitude was mostly bred into him from long periods where his parents didn't have time to talk to him as a child, leaving him to mostly talk to portraits, many of which were from less modern times and therefore held outdated views, one of the problems with the portraits containing old ancestors. 

They got along pretty well, though. Draco was pretty confused why they hadn't met before, what with him being Professor Snape's kid, but after telling him the story his father and dad made up it cleared it up for him pretty quick. No way he would have met Draco if his dad wasn't aware of him. But if he'd actually been born to Severus and Tom, Draco and him would have been brothers to an extent, because Severus was Draco's godfather and apparently Lucius Malfoy was Harry's, too. 

Harry ate dinner that night with Draco to his side and Theo and Blaise across from them. Theodore and Draco got along splendidly, and Blaise and Draco bonded quite easily over their strong fashion sense and similar ego sizes. Draco did not, however, share many interests with them. Draco much more liked Astronomy and Potions than History like Theo, but Theo's interest in alchemy helped them bond as Potions and Alchemy had similar properties. Draco did not know much music like Blaise, but Blaise was quite happy to share it with him, and they got along quite well after that despite the fact that Blaise wasn't a big fan of Astronomy, finding it pretty useless. Blaise did, however, find runes pretty fascinating. 

Haytham shared interests with all of them, Runes, Potions, Alchemy and a bit of Astronomy especially. He had already decided that in third year his electives were going to be Runes and Arithmancy anyways, and Draco decided to join him. Theo was going to do Care of Magical Creatures with Blaise, and Blaise was going to do Magical Music as his second. Theo hadn't decided his second subject yet, but admitted he might go into Ghoul Studies for a semester to see if he liked it. 

Not much happened otherwise. Haytham grew closer to Draco, Theodore and Blaise through studying and the quiet life of first year Slytherins. DADA was quite fun, when Harry got past Professor Quirrell's stutter. While the professor was a competent teacher of his subject, his nervousness led him to being ignored by most of his students. The man was utterly petrified by the DADA curse, and Harry didn't know why the poor man even changed jobs to teach it. 

(He later discovered that the Muggle Studies class was so tiny that year that Dumbledore didn't bother to do it, instead forcing Quirrell to teach Defense for a tiny increase in pay for the year.) 

The only really interesting parts, Haytham noted, were Weasley and Granger. 

Granger was… Irritating. The definition of all the reasons why Purebloods hate Muggleborns, she was christian, determined to spread her monotheism and its god through Hogwarts, and was determined that the culture of the Wizarding World was barbaric and uncivilized. 

This was because, since either gender could carry (though specific men had a much easier time of it, being 'carriers' by nature) and with a bit of ritual magic anyone could adopt a child with their very blood, couples of all kinds were rampant. Gryffindors were mostly straight, which was unfortunate, but a few of all of the houses had begun to match up. Oliver Wood, Marcus Flint and Percy Weasley, for example, seemed to be having a silent sexual tension match at all times. There were also two upper year Slytherins who were dating, both girls, and a gay couple in Hufflepuff were courting this year, apparently. 

The other irritant was Weasley. A true blood traitor, the Weasley family was a conundrum. The twins, Percy, Bill and Charlie were all raised Wizarding, but somehow in some way the youngest of the bunch, Ginerva and Ronald, were raised in an almost sickening manner. They didn't know proper etiquette, according to some, and Ronald Weasley was quite disgusting in his lack of knowledge. His social faux pas had begun to be legend, as he not only turned down the hand of the prominent purebloods but also bullied Granger seemingly without knowing it. 

Weasley was also determined that all Slytherins were abhorrent acts against nature, because he continued to insult them and call them 'slimy slytherin snakes' constantly, despite having not met basically any of them until classes. Haytham remained unimpressed by this. 

But perhaps the worst was Charlus Boy-who-lived Potter, the most arrogant boy that Haytham had ever met. Who, for reasons unknown, had decided that out of all of the students at the school, _Haytham_ was obviously the worst of the lot. He was more like a rabid dog, Draco told Haytham once, than a boy at all! 

A month passed, and the Slytherins four still chatted away at one another, studied together, wrote essays together, bonded, and grew close. 

And then Halloween slipped in, and as always, it brought something _new_ to play with. 


	5. A Summary of Dramatical Events at Hogwarts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter words: 3133  
> Posted: 1/20/18 @4pm  
> Chapter Rating: Teen-ish  
> Warnings: Very Very Very Mild Injury/monster death descriptions.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, in the guise of Thomas Malvolio Riddle, was an intimidatingly handsome figure. Tall, enough to match Severus and his reaching height of over six feet, and armed with a charming, white toothed smile, he was a very attractive man. His features were darker, hair like dark chocolate and skin like pale honey marked lightly with caramel tones where he had tanned from the sun. His eyes, unlike his original dull hazy blue and his then-rich red, were now a milky chocolate marked with the dark maroon and spots of crimson like specks of blood, and lined in honey gold. 

His face was aristocratic, a mix of heart-shaped and square jawed, with the sharp cheekbones oft found in Muggle aristocracy. His nose was straight and thin, aquiline with the sloping tip of the roman. The attractive features were a mix of the Gaunt line- though their heart shapes faces and roman noses had been lost to incestuous relations- and the Riddles, who were known to have had aquiline noses, strong cheekbones, and the strong jawline that ran in the men. 

The Ladies of the Noble houses nearly fell over one another at the first sighting of the man, looking so innocent in the picture taken by a reporter. Tom had been walking side-by-side with Lucius Malfoy, whos sharp, cold countenance and pale hair drew attention as it was. He quickly became a favorite of reporter's, who fell to their quills and ink, hovering around him like flies. 

With the reemergence of a Lord Gaunt and Riddle after many a century, discounting Thomas Riddle's 'father' Tom Marvolo Riddle, who never had the chance to claim the seats in the Wizengamot after he mysteriously went missing shortly after leaving to get experience for a teaching position at Hogwarts, the Wizengamot was in quite a tizzy! 

Such a tizzy, in fact, that the Dark sect could see exactly when Albus Dumbledore began to pull his weight in the Light faction against the bills the Dark put forward. After Tom joined the Dark, the Dark had more Lords and Ladies than the Light sect, and the Grey, the deciding factor between the two, was quite relieved to no longer be the tie-breaker. 

Tom's first Wizengamot session was quite fun, to him, and certainly no fun to Dumbledore. The first bill that came up was a bill suggested by one Dolores Umbridge. It was this; the tagging and tracking of Dark creatures like Vampires, Werewolves, and other creatures like them. Tom threw all his votes against the bill, and the Dark sect followed him, a slow trickle of his closest followers first, and then the rest. The Light were for it, simply to oppose them, and the Grey sealed the deal; the bill did not pass. 

This trend continued through two more bills; the Orphan & Squib's Protection Act, which made any magical child disowned, left to Muggles, or any Squibs disowned from a family line adoptable by any magical line. The Dark and Grey outvoted the Light, and it passed. The second bill was Squibs & Livelihood act, which allowed Squibs to work in magical areas for shops that did not require a lot of magic, such as Apothecaries, Herbology shops and greenhouses, etcetera. This one also passed. 

The laws that the Dark voted against were the following; the Squibhood Regulation Act, which forced Squibs to live in muggle areas and disallowed them work in magical villages, and a law that allowed magical creatures that can be bred with little effort like Basilisks to be hatched and farmed consistently, without regard for the life of said Basilisks, along with the killing of Basilisk Eggs, naturally laid. 

The last law was slammed down by Tom with quite a show of force, his eyes furious. 

But when Tom was not amongst his newfound Lordly peers, he was sending and reading letters. His son was quite pleased at Hogwarts, and wrote to them every time he could. When he was not reading Haytham's letters, he was planning his next visit to Severus. 

Their visits are warm, and Tom often brings both gifts and news. He cannot properly court Severus when he is in the school- cannot take him away and show him all that Tom knows, has seen. Cannot take his courtee, his perhaps newfound love and their child to see the blossoming cherries of the East, the snow capped mountains and rolling valleys of Russia, nor the warm seas of Rome. He cannot show Severus the joys that come from that of traditional dance, cannot show him the views of the stars and the forests and lakes; but he can bring news of things that Severus cannot hear about, bring gifts and chocolates and soft, chaste kisses. And for now, that was enough. 

Even if the brat _did_ ruin some of these moments, before running away cackling at their irritated glares. 

~-~ 

Gronvith was old. 

Like many things are old, she was old. Old old old. The word was easy in the Snake tongue, a flicking snap of the tongue on the roof of the mouth. She did not have many things to do, but talk to herself. She whispered things she did not want to forget into the dark, her eyes wide and gold as she stared outwards. 

She protected this place. It was cold, and made of stone. She did not go very far, moved so very rarely. It was so cold, here, so much so that sometimes she felt that she was made of stone, too. She knew little of things outside this place, depended almost entirely on the tiny snakes that found their ways through the tubes that fed her so very rarely. Prey once bountiful, like deer and small rodents, became rarer and rarer. Now, she got spiders, sickening little things full of hair and prickly little fangs. They had no meat, their blood was thin and they tasted awful. Often, they were small and irritating to catch. Their many eyes oft left them dead before they saw her. Boring boring boring. 

She was very tired of spider. 

But sometimes snakes came, whispered to her of things as she lay like a stone monolith in her chamber which whistled it was so silent. They told her of hatchlings, little Kro children who puttered around in the castle, this huge stone building which she had not seen from the outside in centuries now. 

She had long keened for the loss of her first master, and few had visited her since. None let her from this shadowy prison. Her grief was dull and distant, like she herself. She wondered how long it had been, since the last heir came. She remembered his scent- the musk of Men but the tang of citrus and coconut, the flavor of his magic. Under that, she remembered the soft scent of something false that smelled faint and sweet, and under that he smelt of parchment, and she could taste the ink that stained his fingertips in the air. 

Under that he smelt of blood, too close to the skin and out of it, of bruises and pain and the softest scent of sickness. He had smelled faintly of rot, the black kind of sickness that grew not in flesh but in brain. Her Master had smelt of it, too, once. 

His name had been Tom, Tom Marvolo Riddle, and he was clever. A scholar, he had spent time with her, brief as it was. He let her out once so that she may petrify students out of the school after hours, in hopes that he could get the school locked down, so that he could stay over the summer, away from the Muggle orphanage he lived in. 

Gronvith knew orphanages, where they stored the children that no one wanted, with no parents. She did not understand why nobody wanted Tom, until he explained that the Muggles were at war. Food was scarce, tensions high. Nobody had time, money, or food to raise him. And he was just one amongst many others who lost their parents to the Blitz. 

The Blitz, he told her, was awful. Bombs, huge things like great exploding curses, were dropped from planes, flying machines. None of them could escape, and they were picked at like people dropping rocks on ants. He had luck, to be able to come here. Yet, he could not stay. The man, the Headmaster, he did not let the muggleborns or halfbloods who lived in such conditions stay, his mind poisoned by a cruel man who hated Tom. 

This, to her, was foolish. Why make the children go where they do not want to go? For their own good? This was war. Children should go where they wish to stay- it is hardly likely that a child who loves their family would willingly stay away all of their seven years, and hardly the responsibility of the Headmaster to decide. And this excuse of checking the wards was quite rubbish, too, because they shouldn't need to be checked at all! Rowena herself laid them, and they worked off the ambient magic that came from hundreds of children casting spells near daily in the school. Salazar and Rowena spent so long making sure that any wards casted in would be judged by Hogwarts too, so whichever ones that were good stayed and charged like the rest, so whichever wards that needed to be 'checked' were not approved anyway! This made her wonder what such wards could have been added, that they needed to be checked… If there were any, that was. 

But then Gronvith accidentally killed the girl in the bathroom. Tom was horrified to find his plan failing; they would send all the children back, no exceptions. Tom did not want to die, was terrified to die without… well, that hardly mattered now. She was sent back to the Chamber. 

She did not see Tom for a long time, after that. 

When he came back, he was red. His blood seeped into her senses, the smell of it clogging and thick. His dull blue eyes were duller, like the color was leached from them. The taint of rot and sickness was greatly grown. He cared less, and his once sharp mind was dulled. He got lost, was confused easily, and he was so, so angry... 

But he came back, and it was enough. 

She watched the boy destroy himself. 

But she was old, and that was a long time ago. 

~-~ 

The halloween feast was a great time for many. While celebration of the Dark Lord Voldemort's death had fallen out of fashion, Charlie Potter's presence drew them to the forefront once more. Children gorged on sweets, Haytham ate fruit and planned to laugh at the stomach aches of his friends later, and Severus was spending his night off having quality time with his Courted. 

Dumbledore fumed quietly at the head table at the absence of his love-struck Potions Master, bets were placed by the professors on how hungover Severus would be the following day, and drinks were had. 

But Severus and Tom were not having a wonderful night sharing a warm bed; that would be later. No, at that moment, they slipped into a very specific corridor, sang a lullaby to a three headed dog, shined away a Devil's Snare, hunted a flying key, played a rigorous game of chess, and passed a very difficult riddle- or, Tom did, anyway. 

It took not long for Tom to see just _what_ Severus had gifted him, taking him through this set of challenges- and Severus was devoured in kisses for quite some time afterwards, and taken to bed for a lovely night of worship in turn. 

/ 

Haytham, meanwhile, had no idea of what his parents (adopted or not) were up to. He had instead been watching Potter (and Weasley, that foul little rat) chatter at one another. He spun his little straw in his smoothie and, like all the others, his eyes shot to the Great Hall's doors when Professor Quirrell ran in. 

Professor Quirrell wasn't the bad sort, when you got past his stutter, and he was no fool either. His stutter apparently came from when he was travelling that past summer and observing muggles, and his throat was damaged by some sort of ball or something. Harry hadn't listened much, as Quirrell was hard to listen to on a normal day, much less in conversation. 

**"Troll!"** Quirrell roared, **"There is a Troll in the dungeons!"**

And lo, there was pandemonium. Dumbledore stood, and 'helpfully' shouted to the Houses, "Go to your Common Rooms! Professors, with me!" And he made his way out of the hall. 

Several Slytherin prefects were horrified by the thought of it. "We are **_IN THE DUNGEONS!_** " The four of them roared. The Professors did not care, it seemed, and left the hall. Flitwick nor Severus couldn't comment because they weren't there, as Severus was with his Courted and Flitwick was visiting Gringotts with a Halfblood student that day to work out some problems with their account. 

The Hufflepuffs were not very happy either, as their Commons was _technically_ in the 'Dungeons,' which referred to the underground floors, though the Slytherin Dungeons and Hufflepuff 'basement' were not connected in any way that anyone had noticed, seeing as how the dungeons had been carved into caves and held prisoners once upon a time and the Hufflepuff basement used to be for growing underground plants such as mushrooms and Creepvine. 

However, both were referred to as the 'dungeons' and so neither knew who would encounter the troll. If it was a Cave Troll, it would be the Slytherins. If it was a Mountain troll, which preferred drier places, it would be the basement. So, with fearful glances to one another, the Hufflepuffs and the Slytherins warily made their way to their respective commons. 

Both ventured into the dark unknown, and nobody would know who encountered the troll until the next night. And so, it was the Hufflepuffs who did not know if their Slytherin classmates had survived the night, that day, for it was the Slytherins that encountered the troll, something that took several adults with fully fledged magical cores to defeat as it was. 

You see, there was not just one troll but two that night. A fully grown, furious mother troll, whom the Slytherins encountered, and an adolescent male troll, nearly fully grown but not quite, upon the third floor, where Dumbledore directed his professors that night whom two Gryffindors encountered in a bathroom, where one Hermione Granger was. 

So while two foolish Gryffindor boys and a girl knocked out the troll on the third floor, it was the Slytherins who encountered the furious mother troll whom had lost track of her baby. 

The upper years, amongst them the Prefects, surrounded their classmates by year. The youngest in the middle, including young Haytham and his friends, and older years like the Quidditch captain Marcus Flint, with third and fourth years like Higgs in the middle of the line. 

Upon encountering the troll, the Slytherins formed a line to block the furious, fur-clad green-skinned mother troll from the first years, who knew barely any spells to protect themselves. In waves, the Slytherins escaped from the line, running at full sprint to the Ashwinder, who upon seeing the troll pushing back the line of desperate students opened its coils just enough to fit the students. However, the Ashwinder was not designed to open or close quickly, being made of stone. 

The Serpent-door opened a half-inch for every student through, and, like all of the Common-room doors, began to activate Protection Protocol. But Hogwarts, whos wards were damaged for the pile of madness that each of the Headmasters had clumped upon her, was slow in its response as it tried to activate the Dungeon Defenses. 

Of the nearly three hundred statues in the Dungeons that were supposed to activate, fourteen activated, and only two were in good enough repair to respond. 

A crumbling Peruvian Vipertooth raced to the aid of the students, followed closely by a marble Ironbelly. As they did, the wards began to fire off alarms in the quarters where Severus and Tom resided. Both flew to action at the noise, and raced to assist. 

It was the defenses and the assistance of the two adults that saved many of the seventh years that day, many of whom were severely hurt. It was the Peruvian that tied down the Troll, wrapping its weight and girth around it so that it could not approach the students it had nearly killed. It was the Ironbelly who breathed white-hot fire upon the troll, damaging it. It was Tom and Severus who rescued nearly all of the Seventh Years whom had fallen to protect the sixth and fifth years, healing them and putting them into stasis to prevent blood loss. 

But it was the dragons who killed the troll, the Peruvian biting again and again and again with its limited venom, long old and likely not nearly so potent as it once was. It was the Ironbelly who breathed fire, taking hit after hit and biting and biting and breathing. Eventually, the troll lay still and silent, fighting no longer. 

The exhausted (and likely traumatized) students cheered for its death, and many sat down as soon as it was dead, resting and letting the adrenaline go down. Severus, having helped many of the hurt students, got up and rushed to his quarters, activating his floo to the emergency channel for St Mungo's. He had a license, as a potions master and professors, for requesting Mass-portkeys for injuries that had many people. 

"I need four five-person portkeys, or two ten-person portkeys for emergency use." He told the person who answered. Immediately, two items popped through the Floo, little coin-shaped pieces of wood that had spokes like a wheel so all ten people could hold onto them, even if lying down. These portkeys would take longer, but would aggravate injuries less due to how they were made. 

Severus delivered these back, and the sixth and seventh years who were injured the most grabbed onto them. Severus activated both with the code phrase and watched the students zip off to St Mungos. The rest of the students were healed from minor injuries by potions, potion paste, and a bit of clever magic on Tom's side, and sent to rest and inform the younger years what happened. 

(Tom also told the Serpent-door that all was well, and the two dragon statues- a bit more crumbled than before- went back to their pedestals so that Hogwarts could do her best to repair them.) 

Only the Slytherins knew about this… 

So naturally, the entire wizarding world knew about it the next morning. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't like this chapter.
> 
> Reasons? Well. I suck @ dialogue, you might have noticed the severe lack of it by now in fact. I am better at describing things, and telling things as though they were being talked about like past events, ie the reason things like relationships are described and generalized and dialogue consists of tiny sections. Ex a dude telling a kid 'and they were very close. best friends in fact!' and not like... describing how they met up and 'all their conversations were joking funny see hahahah? ' and all that jazz, ya know? also, this chapter is shorter than the rest. I wanted it to be longer, but... nah. I am not rewriting it to be 57million words or something because I don't think its long enough somehow. Its fine how it is. So... yeah. Didn't like this chapter. Also! Nobody died in this chapter. Their injuries were glossed over because im not describing how i dont know... jon lewis the sixth year got his leg snapped or whatever the heck. I might mention these guys later, but as of now they are background injuries and therefore they are... background ish. get me? so yeah


	6. Daily Prophet & The Troll Incident

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wordcount: 3562  
> posted 1/27/18 @ 1pm  
> no real warnings here excepting mild injury description in the newspaper  
> rated gen
> 
> ex: couldn't get the font to work on the newspaper (rip because it looked real good on my doc) but its still noticeably separate from the rest of the text

The Wizarding World was not as small as people would think, though it indeed was small. So small, in fact, that the population of wizards and witches was barely over 1.7 million- _worldwide,_ that is. The population of magical creatures, both sentient and not, was barely over that. The dragon population was in mere tens of thousands, discounting separate breeds, and things like Phoenix and Basilisk had grown so few since their first discovery that they were presumed extinct with the exception of the phoenix Fawkes since the late 1800's, with the last known Basilisk being hatched by human hand (that is, a chicken egg under a toad) in 1912 for potions parts, few of which actually remained. 

The population of magical beings, both sentient and not, was so small in fact that their number was under that of even some smaller countries in Europe or just east of it. Many of the wizarding population actually lived in communities hidden into that of the larger countries, for example the wizarding population of Europe, which held the Ministries of France, Britain, Germany, Italy, etc, which held some of the largest of the wizarding population, capping at around 37.8% of the population. 

The Chinese-Japanese Ministries held nearly 23.7%, and Greenland and Iceland held alone almost 6.3%, as many Wizarding towns existed in the northern parts of Greenland and spattered amongst the Icelandic peoples. 16.2 Nearly 12.2% lived in the USA, with the rest of the 20% living in other parts of the world such as Egypt, one of the oldest Wizarding nations, and parts of South America. 

So, to say that the separate Ministries didn't give a single shite about one another was pretty accurate. Most of the Ministries and like had once been run by Aristocracy, such as the Wizengamot of Britain and the 28 remaining Lord families of what used to be nearly fifty. Each Lord house had Vassals, commanding a specific territory or Wizarding settlement. These Wizarding settlements were under the protection of the Lords, and in return paid monies to live on the Lord's land. Much of the Lords had been lost, but Deeds and Monies were part of Gringotts, and goblins forget nothing, their memories nearly eidetic in their structure, and so Goblins all knew that where and to whom the land belonged. 

The Gaunts, for example, once owned wide swaths of land (now mostly lost under its ancient runic matrix) that surrounded Little Hangleton, and if you looked closely you could probably find exactly where the borders of that land existed. The Gaunts also owned, thanks to the purchases of one Tom Marvolo Riddle, a huge section of land around Snake Road in northern England, in a reserve where they hosted wild Hippogriff herds. The Peverells owned a southeastern part of Scotland that spilled over the border to england, and the Potters owned a small island and a piece of Wales. The Malfoys owned a large area around their manor, and the Princes owned a small island off the coast of Cornwall, along with a section of said coast. The Founders, obviously, owned huge chunks of Scotland surrounding Hogwarts, which they built their manors upon. 

A lot of this land was seemingly lost, locked tightly with Goblin space-warping to prevent those that didn't own it from claiming it- so long as it was empty of human or magical life of any kind, including creatures. Tons of this land was actually kept through the breaking apart of the huge Supercontinent where the Magicals claimed. The 'Pangea' that Muggles thought of was actually the other half of the Supercontinent, before the two halves began to split right down the middle. Greenland had once been the place called Skyrim, though it was now warped and had lost much of its history, and there were bits and pieces of islands hidden about in the oceans near it and Iceland that used to be bits of islands that once surrounded Skyrim. Iceland, in fact, used to be one of the larger islands around Skyrim before the ice formed during one of the ice ages melted and it was shrunken quite drastically as it drifted southwards. Lots of Skyrim had broken into pieces as the once mountainous lands began to erode, and bits and pieces were split off by tectonic plates deep in the earth. 

Eventually, bits and pieces of the Magical land began to meet the Muggle one, and they started sticking together as time passed, forming huge landscapes. Much of the Magical land was around the edges of the world now, in fact, with small islands scattered like little spots of salt all around the northern hemisphere. Larger pieces drifted across the arctic and other oceans, smooshing themselves into places such as Europe, the northern edges of Russia, etcetera. Tons of them actually eventually merged into Canada, unseen to muggles and lush with the green life of Skyrim still, untouched. 

Of course, Magical people had stuffed their heads so far up their- well. Their everything else, really, especially in the common times. The oldest of the Lord families held libraries they hid away which held ancient knowledge, and books so old they were from beyond the BCE era, and shared nothing of them. This often led to huge, awkward time gaps in the histories of magical humans, and even the most long lived of them- such as the Vampires- had only the barest recollection of times when the Supercontinent was formed, and their information was mostly word-of-mouth, especially back then where covens had only the maximum of fifteen vampires. Nowadays, covens can be upwards of hundreds, and the largest Coven was actually in Romania, where the ruling royalty quite literally stumbled over them inside a Warped area that the Vampires lived in. 

But the size of the Romanian Vampire Coven isn't the point here. No, it was the lack of knowledge that the Magical Humans had. Their number, once breaching millions, was nearly extinct during the event called the Surge. This happened when the magical continent was split, and the pieces began to slowly but surely slide away from the ley lines they once rested on. Magicals on Greenland were nearly made extinct as their magic, especially those with Earth-based power, were pushed from their power source. Those of Sun, Moon and Space (referred to mostly as the Light mages, the Grey mages, and the Dark mages respectively) remained fine, but Earthly magics, drawn from the power of the earth below their feet, greatly suffered as the bitter coldness that grew upon Greenland, and its distance from Ley lines, nearly drove the Earth mage magics to extinction, as many were on the piece of land that became Greenland due to its placement directly over a ley line. Sun Mages were also greatly weakened in the more northern hemispheres due to the lack of direct sunlight on areas more north during nearly half the year. 

Of course, _modern_ witches and wizards did not know what exactly the distinction between Sun, Moon and Space wizards really were. Earth mages, for example, were excellent at sensing the balances of the world, and most commonly were Seers, excepting the Moon mages, who were said to see the reflections of the future in the moon when it casted upon the water. These mages were great with plants, were natural herbalists and, while limited in their spellcasting, were always consistent in their power levels, growing stronger when surrounded by life and weaker in the cold. 

Sun, or Light, mages drew their power from- you guessed it- _the sun._ Seen as the Brightest and Biggest, they were seen as more powerful than Moon mages when it came to things like Restoration because the Sun was what fuelled Life, and allowed things to evolve from single celled organisms to plants and animals through long periods of times. These mages were the 'Fire' mages of Olde. 

Moon- or Grey- mages drew power from the moon. The second most powerful of the Mages, they were where the 'cast ritual on the full moon' poppy cock brewed up from, as their power was bolstered depending on the stages of the moon. They grew more powerful on the New Moon and Full Moon, and were lessened by the waning and waxing, at their weakest at the half-stages, and strongest at the maximum of both ways. They casted the strongest spells of Illusion and Conjuration, but were weaker at Restoration and Destruction. These mages were also referred to as the Water mages, for their Moon pushed and pulled the waves, giving them life. 

Space was the last and final of the Mage. The most destructive, these Magi were best at Destruction and Alchemy, and could cause chaos the easiest. Their magic was naturally wild and strong, and they drew their power from the absence of things, the very essence of Space. These Magi were said to be limited only by their body when it came to spellcasting, and were commonly drawn to violent spells. Their minds hungered and they were commonly greedy, either for blood or other things. They could cast rituals easier than most, due to their ability to pull power from Space itself, and were said to be particularly skilled at Astronomy. However, of all the mages, these were the rarest, and their magic was inherited or spontaneous in lines. Once, this was viewed as a good thing, but these mages had long since become even rarer for their talents once they were pinned as 'dark,' as the word became easily explained as 'evil.' The jack of all trades of Elementals, they had a subcaste of mages called Atmospheric Mages who were specialized in wind and weather, and drew power from both earth and moon, who were also labeled as Dark. 

Elements were not, however, engraved in how you drew your Magic from around you. They were affected by your Soul, your Magic, your Body, your Mind, and your Personality. A Moon Mage could just as easily be Fire as Water, or they could be Wind rather than Earth, but there were distinctions between these. Fire were more easily riled, but their magic was harder to sooth. Water was hard to anger, but when it did it was more a tsunami than calm ocean. Wind can be soothing breezes, eager to learn and dance, right up until it tossed itself into a hurricane, crushing all in its path. Earth is gentle and calm, but you never knew when it was going to quake, causing damage to all that angered it. 

So it was hard to predict what sort of element you may become, as your personality matured. A child born to Water may be inclined to Wind as they grow, and just as suddenly shift to Earth as they mature as they might to Fire. A child born of tantrums and fire may grow to be calmer and happier, ending up as Water. You didn't quite know, as your core and self were ever-changing between them all, inclining you to many. 

But Space were the only Magical that could hold affinity to them all. A Fire may be holding the power of Water in their hand, and Earth in their eyes. A Water may hold Wind in their hair and Fire in their heart. 

And time passed. Space grew rarer, and ever more rare… And a family who knew of the past, of the Olde, realized- but we are Space? And then another family… and another… and then grew a huge system around fifty houses with fifty lords who had Magic. They would start, they decided, with three seats each. And they began to make laws, and a society in their place. They made a society, and Magical Britain was born. 

Prosperity! And lo, these Lords claimed land, and many a magical child was born upon them. Vassals! Land! Magic was born, potions were made, new research was created, and they prospered for hundreds of years. 

But greed began to brew, for no country run with Nobles had ever had them never fight. So they fought, wand to wand. Alliances were born, marriages made, and lines intertwined as they squabble like chickens in a yard, trying to make a pecking order none of the others agreed with. 

Four people, two lords and two ladies, finally realized that this would get them nowhere, and never quickly. They slapped each of the others in the face, scolded them, and then instead they began to meet. The Lords and Ladies they found they quite liked one another, actually, when they weren't fighting the wars of their ancestors, and peace was made. This was the birth of the Court of Magic, which eventually became the Wizengamot in modern times. 

Those four people eventually went on to make a school called Hogwarts in a castle that laid upon a ley line in Scotland. They cleaned it up, got some house elves, and got to work. The Lords of the Court, as they were called, clapped delightedly when they found out, and kids were sent and professors hired. An old man went there, and told the Four Founders that he was Merlin, one of the last of those who knew the Olde Ways. He was sorted to Slytherin House, and found that Salazar was related to him. 

Slytherin, after Merlin died, fought harshly with the other Three. Slytherin, you see, was wary of the 'Muggleborns' who were coming into his school, telling the others to take them away and raise them Magical, before they led Witch Hunters straight to them. The others disagreed, and then proceeded to disagree with all that Slytherin suggested, such as teaching the students the Old Ways, or their history. 

Slytherin fought with Gryffindor harshly over this, and then the other Founders found out he had built a Chamber under the school. They ousted him, and he left with feverish anger in his blood. He travelled for years, searching for a Great Dragon's Egg to show them that the Olde Ways were not 'just history,' that they were fact. He never found one, but he did find his husband. He had three children by his Husband's name, and the rest, we say, is history… 

Cut to thousands of years later, over the birth of eras that Salazar would never dream of and the Industrial Age, which many a Wizarding Lord took complete advantage of, and you come to his few living descendants. 

Tom Marvolo Riddle, reborn once more into a fresh body and courting a wizard who was beginning to adore with all his heart… and Harry Potter, now Haytham Riddle-Snape, who was quite happy with his new parents, and a true Slytherin for tricking them into courting one another when they were too oblivious to one another to realize their attraction. 

If Salazar Slytherin had died a ghost, he would be rolling on the floor with laughter, and cackling at Dumbledore's misfortune the day that Haytham Snape came to Hogwarts. 

~-~ 

The owls brought in that mornings post to a Great Hall filled with students. Hufflepuffs, full of concern and worry, barely ate that morning when they saw that the Slytherin table was completely, utterly empty. Empty plates sat where the students usually sat, but the house elves had put out no food for them. The teachers, more specifically the Elective teachers who had escorted the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors to the towers as it took longer to get to the Towers than the other floors looked particularly worried. 

Flitwick also looked very troubled. Severus Snape wasn't even at the Head Table that morning. 

Owls, inconsiderate of those below, began dropping off Prophets and flying straight back out into the windows. Papers plopped into eggs and soups, but everyone was too busy looking at the headline to care. 

**_Slytherins in Hogwarts attacked by full grown Cave Troll!_**

_Penned by Rita Skeeter_

_My dearest readers! Foul things are afoot in Hogwarts today!_

_Last night, 20+ Slytherin students were emergency porkeyed into St Mungos for medical assistance by Potions Master Professor Severus Snape and his Courted, Thomas Malvolio Riddle._

_I went myself to find answers amongst the wounded, and have come to you with startling news._

_"This shouldn't have happened," Both Severus Snape and Thomas Riddle told me, "Hogwarts was supposed to be the safest place possible, and yet a fully grown Cave Troll got into the dungeons with no warning. How is that possible? The wards should have activated automatically to warn us, yet it took the Slytherin House Common's Door seeing it for any sort of emergency protocol to activate."_

_Later, Riddle also added that, "The protocol designed to protect the Dungeons could not even sense the Troll, and were late to respond even after the Slytherin Door warned both my Courted and I that something was amiss. The warning was urgent, but was the 'unknown danger' warning. While I am thankful for the aid of Hogwarts and her enchantments, I am wondering what would cause Her to be so slow in responding in the Dungeons, especially when such great danger is so near, much less to make her not be able to see what the danger even was?"_

_Another student, a third year, told me, "We were so scared. A lot of the older students started herding us away from it, and the fourth years helped us get the first years inside the Common Room when the debris started flying. Then these huge dragon statues stormed in, and held it down and attacked it when our Head of House was warned by the wards and came to help us. A lot of the seventh and sixth years got hurt, and without the handful of Medi-wizard students they certainly would have died!" The boy told me, tearfully._

_The hufflepuffs, also, were scared for their safety. "They just old us to go to our Commons." A fifth year hufflepuff told me sourly, worried for those who were hurt, most especially her cousin, who was a fourth year Slytherin being treated for being hit by flying debris. Referring to the Professors, she said, "Dumbledore just told us to go to our commons, but both the Slytherins and us Hufflepuffs are technically in the dungeons, even if they say that the Hufflepuffs are actually in the basement. We didn't know which House would run into the troll, then. I'm guilty for it, but I am glad the Slytherins were the ones that found it. None of the Hufflepuffs are in the healing classes, and we certainly would have died. I hope they get well, soon."_

_This brings much cause for concern, my dearest readers. What could possibly have caused such tragedy? All of the Slytherin Students have been withdrawn from classes today, following the event, by Head of Slytherin House Severus Snape to allow them to recover from this shocking event. Some are even being treated by Mind Healers at St Mungo's Hospital, especially the younger years. Some of the Healers at the hospital have commended the two Healing students in Slytherin for their work in saving several of their classmates, one of whom had been pierced straight through by rocky debris from the Troll's angry smashing of the Castle's walls._

_"Without these young students, this boy would certainly have died had they not stabilized him so quickly." Healer Benedyl informed me gravely. "Three of the sixth years, and two of the seventh years would have died without their aid. They are deserving of more than house points for this- they deserve apprenticeships of the finest Healers and awards for their quick thinking and cunning in using the spells they did to save one of the students from going into shock, and young Dremina's anti-tetanus shot saved one of the students who had been hit by reflecting metal from a long-rusted wall sconce that the Troll threw after crushing in its fist. This is true cunning, and how quick the Slytherin house can be."_

_This strong approval by one of the greatest trauma healers of these two students is incredible at their ages (Dremina Drux and Kent Hollyway are 14 and 16 respectively) and already they have been offered apprenticeships by Benedyl and her husband, who is also a trauma healer at St Mungo's under the Muggle-magical Accidents ward._

_But this makes me think, dear readers; just why, exactly, did the Hogwarts wards fail to warn anyone beforehand? Hogwarts has been said by the Headmaster himself, Dumbledore, has assured parents hundreds of times before that Hogwarts is quite safe. Was he wrong? Did he lie? Was there something wrong with the wards of Hogwarts, or is there something more sinister going on here?_

_This has been Rita Skeeter, and I swear to you I will find the answers to this._

_See page 2 for Healer Apprentices Dremina & Kent_

_See page 5 for full account of the Troll incident_

_See page 6 for full list of injuries_

_See page 7 for theories on the Hogwarts Wards by my fellow reporter Zugat Menx_

The students of Hogwarts muttered about this with narrow eyes, glancing at the empty Slytherin table. The teachers read the Prophet with serious faces, but none noticed Dumbledore, and the odd look in his eyes as he looked at the Hufflepuff table. 

Things were beginning to crack in his perfect little chessboard. 


End file.
